1 Corinthians 1:18, 25

Acts 7:22,  Matthew 10:16,  Proverbs 9:10,  Psalm 111:10,   James 3:13-15,

A zoo in modern-day Israel houses all the animals mentioned in the bible. One exhibit features a lamb and a wolf in the same pen. When my friend, Rabbi Larry Englander, visited this zoo he asked an attendant how this could be: a lamb and a wolf in the same pen! Without looking up or missing a broomstroke the attendant replied, “Every day, a new lamb.” Lambs don’t last long among the wolves.

When Jesus sent out his missioners he told them that their task would not be easy. “Behold, I send you out as sheep among wolves”, he said. Then he added the caution, “So be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” You and I (together will everyone else) live in a wolfish world. Wisdom is needed merely to survive. Greater wisdom is needed if, beyond surviving, people and communities are to thrive. Greater wisdom still is needed if Jesus Christ is to be discerned and honoured and obeyed, and his kingdom pointed out.

I: — Let’s think first about the wisdom needed if people are to survive, even thrive. We must never assume that such wisdom is found among Christians only. Such wisdom is found among different peoples in every era. Luke tells us that “Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.” Two things stand out here. One, there was genuine wisdom in Egypt; two, the wisdom Moses acquired in Egypt was surely put to good use when he led the Israelite people (who were non-Egyptians) out of Egypt and then led them through the wilderness years.

Scripture maintains that wisdom is especially needed in any society in the arts of government and justice. Unless a society possesses wisdom with respect to governing, that society will collapse into chaos. Since social existence is impossible amidst chaos, people will rush to end the chaos by submitting to tyranny. Tyranny may be unpleasant, but at least it permits survival. In a word, unless some people in any society are wise in the art of governing, oppression will ensue.

In the same way the Hebrew bible insists on the necessity of justice. Unless the courts are seen to be just inasmuch as they in fact are just, individuals will attempt to redress injustices themselves, with the result that social existence is a desperate scramble where even the scramble is foreshortened for many.

But of course wisdom is needed — and found — in many areas besides government and justice throughout many different cultures. The Chinese, native Africans, Amerindians: they all possess a wisdom in areas of life where we white North Americans appear to lack it; we should be silly to discredit it or ignore it. John Wesley, having understood the importance of that Egyptian wisdom which Moses acquired, used to urge his 18th century Methodist followers to “plunder the Egyptians”. By “plunder the Egyptians” Wesley meant that sensible Christians will be grateful for wisdom they come upon anywhere. To be sure, the wisdom we come upon anywhere at all we shall modify and adapt in light of the light which Jesus Christ is. Nonetheless, since wisdom, everywhere in scripture, has to do with how to live, we shall not disdain any help with living which we gain from any quarter. Remember: when Jesus urges us to be wise he prefaces his urging with the reminder that we live in a wolfish world. In other words, lack of wisdom is fatal.

II: — As we think together about wisdom today we should understand that more focused than the wisdom which can be found among the “Egyptians” is that wisdom which is reflected in the discipleship of Christ’s followers. This wisdom starts with the fear of God: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”. “Fear” in the sense of awe, reverence, respect; acknowledgement that God is God and is not to be trifled with. God is creator; he has fashioned the creation in such a way that we can live in harmony with his plan and purpose and will, or we can try to live against it. But to try to live against it is to find ourselves rubbed raw, and rawer still, until life is gratingly painful, miserable, useless, and even abbreviated. In short, to try to live against the Creator’s plan and purpose and will is to die.

We have no difficulty understanding all of this in the physical realm. The person who neglects nutrition, shortchanges herself on sleep, eats what is known to promote gastric distress, goes boating in icy waters without a lifejacket; when it all finally catches up to such a person and disaster overtakes him we shake our heads and say, “What did he expect? What else did he think was going to happen? Has he no wisdom?”

Yet as soon as we move to our total existence under God we seem uncomprehending with respect to wisdom. We pretend that concerning wisdom in our life under God there is a deep, dark mystery. Nonsense! Our Hebrew foreparents always knew that the Ten Commandments, for instance, so far from being arbitrary and confining, onerous and oppressive; the Ten Commandments mark out the boundaries inside which there is blessing and freedom and contentment, outside which there is curse and bondage and misery. The Sermon On The Mount is our Lord’s characterization of his followers. This characterization is to imprint itself so deeply into us that its hidden presence within us will make us glow with it as surely as the electric current in a Christmas tree lightbulb renders the tree unmistakable. The weight and pressure of our risen Lord upon the apostles impelled them to speak his mind and heart; for this reason the apostolic injunctions on how to live bespeak the mind of Christ. The author of Hebrews, for instance, maintains that as soon as Christ’s people find the rank weed of bitterness growing up within them they are to uproot it lest they (and others) become defiled.

Last September I preached a sermon, “Touched Again”, in which I spoke of my deliverance from several things which had haunted me and twisted me for the last two or three years. One such matter was bitterness. The struggle which has claimed so much of my time and energy and anguish had subtly embittered me. And then by God’s grace I was relieved as Maureen put her finger on the unsightly pus-point which I had managed not to see. Within a few weeks of that sermon half-a-dozen people here spoke to me quietly of how they had been victimized at some point in their lives, and how they too had struggled with deep-seated resentment and acidified heart until they too were delivered (or, in or two cases, now understand that they must seek deliverance.) To recognize the apostolic injunction concerning bitterness as the mind and will of Jesus Christ is near-wisdom, but only near-wisdom. Near-wisdom becomes wisdom as and only as we move from recognizing the mind and will of Christ to abandoning ourselves to it.

For years I have maintained that the Christian life is simple. I didn’t say easy; I said simple. Simple in the sense of plain, transparent, unmistakable. For example, when Paul speaks of lurid immorality as unwise we instantly reply, “Of course”; yet when he says in the very same sentence that covetousness is unwise to the same degree and with the same effect we don’t say anything! We find it far easier to avoid lurid immorality (who wants community-disgrace as well as an incurable S.T.D.?) than we do to avoid covetousness. I never said the Christian life is easy; I said simple, simple in the sense that we cannot pretend, we who are Christ’s people, that we do not know what it is. We cannot pretend that we do not know what it is to be wise in a wolfish world. We become genuinely wise; that is, we do the truth, in John’s splendid phrase, as we fear God. The starting point of wisdom, for God’s people, is the fear of God himself.

III: — Wisdom, in scripture, becomes even more narrowly focused. Now it is focused not on life in general, but on congregational life in particular. Wisdom, here, is not merely how to live, but how to live together; more to the point, how to live together as Christ’s people.

Because we are fallen human beings we can always offend others deliberately, and to offend others deliberately is to be guilty of sin. But even if we do not offend others deliberately, we frequently offend them inadvertently. On numerous occasions people have been offended at something about me and told me (told me off) about it, even as I protested that intended no harm. To say I intended no harm, however, is not to say that I did no harm; not to say that I was harmless. Merely to intend no harm is not to be guiltless. One day a woman told me she was offended at my sarcastic speech. I told her I was not aware of it and told here as well that I meant no harm. “I never said that you meant not harm”, she continued, “I’m telling you that did harm, and do it often, since sarcasm is the colour your speech assumes whenever you feel yourself criticized.” I went to the floor with that one, and stayed on the floor for a while. The woman was right. The fact that I haven’t intended harm does not mean that I haven’t done harm. Offence has been given inadvertently, and I am as guilty of sin as much as if I had given offence deliberately.

And then beyond the matter of giving offence, genuinely giving offence, you and I also take offence where in fact no offence has been given at all, neither deliberately nor inadvertently. Some “offenses” are purely imaginary; still, imaginary offenses corrode our life together as much as actual offenses.

Unquestionably some people are more mature and more secure than others. Nevertheless, the most mature, most secure person still has an Achilles heel of immaturity and insecurity. Usually it comes to light accidentally. When it does, the 90% mature, 90% secure person will react exactly like the immature, insecure person. Of course! The Greek figure, Achilles, was vulnerable only through a very small part of his anatomy; yet through this very small part he was entirely vulnerable! To be vulnerable only through our individual Achilles heel is to be as vulnerable there as other people are in large areas of their personality. For this reason the person whom we are not expecting to take offence is prodded, one day, in a sensitive spot unknown to us; suddenly he ignites, or sulks, or retaliates with a counter-prod, or simply quits. At this point “we” — whether those who constitute the “we” are the smallest subcommittee of the congregation or the entire congregation; “we” are on the road to fragmentation.

As a matter of fact the congregation in Corinth had already fragmented. Church-members were lining up behind their favourite leader, bickering among themselves as to which leader was the ablest. Some drank so much wine at the Lord’s Supper that they became disorderly. Some maintained that their talents were superior to the talents of anyone else in the congregation. To be sure, all Christians, said Paul, all Christians are moving towards the unity of the faith, towards maturity, towards the measure of the full stature of Jesus Christ. We are moving towards this, but we aren’t there yet. For this reason the apostle writes to the congregation in Corinth and asks with much anguish, “Isn’t there someone among you who is wise enough to settle disputes?”

The wisdom needed to settle disputes is not a technique. Neither is it duplicity or manipulation. Nothing enrages people so much as feeling that they have been manipulated. They resent being taken advantage of. They resent feeling powerless. What’s more, the person who is reduced to powerlessness quickly becomes the nastiest person around. Nastiness is the final coping-mechanism of the powerless. The wisdom needed in congregational life is not a technique; manipulation is only counter-productive; duplicity, when discovered, will only worsen fragmentation. The wisdom needed to move stand-offs past the impasse; the wisdom needed to get wounded church-members preoccupied not with their wounds but with the kingdom-work to which they have pledged themselves; this wisdom is a gift from God which must be found in several people within a congregation or else the congregation will soon be little more than a collection of people clamouring to have their wound bandaged.

I am aware that I have gifts, which, by God’s grace, are useful in God’s kingdom. I am also aware that there are gifts which other people in vastly greater supply. I am aware that there are people in this congregation who have the gift of wisdom, in the sense of that wisdom needed if a congregation is to thrive, in vastly greater supply than I. In fact, concerning this gift I have often felt like someone attempting watch-repair with a crow-bar; why not let the most skilful jewellers do the watch-repair?

It is the apostle James who has the most to say about that especial wisdom needed to keep a congregation moving ahead in its kingdom-work, not getting sidetracked or stalled by contentions and controversies. With his customary down-to-earth practicality James insists that there are two huge impediments to wisdom’s effectiveness in a congregation: “bitter jealousy” and “selfish ambition”. Bitter jealousy and selfish ambition create a spiritual vacuum which is filled with “disorder and wickedness of every kind”.(NRSV)

Now some of you people have told me that you regard my vocabulary somewhat exaggerated, with the result that some of my pulpit-statements are overstated. “Disorder and wickedness of every kind”: these are not my words. Then is the apostle’s vocabulary exaggerated? I think not. Selfish ambition and bitter jealousy will negate the wisdom which any congregation must have if it is to thrive. It is a sign of wisdom that we recognize the truth of what James says and never doubt it.

IV: — So far we have talked about wisdom from the standpoint of that wisdom which we must exercise, the wisdom needed to live godly lives amidst a wolfish world. Now it is time to talk about God’s wisdom. Paul insists that God’s wisdom is demonstrated in the cross. The cross is that outpouring of God himself by which God has reconciled the cosmos to himself and has pardoned our offenses. No one in the ancient world looked upon the gallows as an act of wisdom; no one in the modern world does either. People with a philosophical turn of mind, says Paul, assume that wisdom comes out of high-brow philosophy. People with a messianic expectation assume that a dramatic occurrence in world history will dazzlingly display eternal wisdom. Paul insists that the act of God’s outpoured sacrifice, the humiliation which tops all of the humiliations he has endured, is alone that wisdom which is the world’s only hope.

Then the apostle says one thing more. The opposite of being wise is being a fool. And we are Christ’s people are most profoundly wise, with God’s wisdom, precisely when we appear most stupidly foolish; namely, when we are fools for Christ’s sake. We are fools for Christ’s sake when we cling to his cross and shoulder our own.

The older I grow the more aware I am of how great a sacrifice congregational leadership exacts. I have been stunned at the self-outpouring and the humiliation which devoted congregational leaders have sustained one hundred times over and will yet.

Beyond congregational life as well, I am aware of weighty crossbearing which is done so very quietly, to be sure, and will prove to have been so very effective on the day of our Lord’s appearing. My friend Bob Rumball, minister of the deaf congregation in Toronto for 35 years; his entire life has been given over to deaf people, especially deaf children who are multi-handicapped (that is, deaf children who are also blind or mute or brain-damaged). One day one of Bob’s five children said to him, “Daddy, can’t we have any friends who can hear?” Then I think of the people whom I meet through the Peel Mental Health Housing Coalition as it attempts to find accommodation for schizophrenic-sufferers. The people in the support networks are usually parents or relatives. The agony they have borne for years, and borne when they could have washed their hands of it all and moved to Vancouver; the burden of their crossbearing you and I will never know.

The wolfish world regards these people as fools. They are fools — but precisely fools of him whose wisdom appears foolish but in fact is the guarantee of the creation’s restoration.

It is as I cheerfully shoulder that cross which has been appointed to me, cheerfully giving up myself forgetfully and undergoing humiliation forgivingly, that I am going to be wise with the wisdom of him who was wise before me and whose foolishness is the world’s only hope.

F I N I S

                                                                            Victor Shepherd

1 Corinthians 1:18 – 2:5

I used to wonder how politicians (many politicians, at least) manage to survive the sharp questions aimed at them. Little by little I came to see that they have two survival techniques. One, they don’t answer the question they’re asked. Question: “Is it true that your party plans to increase personal income taxes?” Response: “My party has the interests of all Canadians at heart.” No one can object to the response, but neither does it answer the question.

In the second place, when politicians respond to a question, they like to speak on and on. As long as they are talking, no one else can talk. Many words are used; very little is said. The better one is at talking, the more readily he can fool someone into thinking he’s saying something. Excess verbiage is either a dodge to mislead people or else it’s a smokescreen to cover something up. Let’s never forget that “bafflegab” is the word Toronto’s newspapers coined to describe a former premier’s legislature utterances.

The ancient world had its talkers too. Ancient rhetoricians spoke eloquently, at great length, with much passion and no little sophistication. “Nevertheless”, said the apostle Paul, “beware of them. Their many words don’t say much. More profoundly, however much or little they say, what they say can’t save. What they say can’t orient women and men to God, can’t replace apathy with gospel-zeal and alienation with ardour; can’t have icy unbelief yield to throbbing faith. So beware. Rhetoric doesn’t save.”

The apostle refuses to try to beat the wordsmiths at their own game. He refuses to compete with them, refuses to play on their field. Instead he announces succinctly where he stands and what he’s about: “I’ve decided to know nothing among you Corinthians except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” (1 Cor. 2:2) The people in Corinth love flowery, florid oratory. Yet the apostle knows this won’t help. People don’t need their ears tickled; they need saving. Furthermore, he continues, that wisdom of the “wise” which so readily entrances so many, God is going to destroy; and that cleverness of the “clever” which so quickly bedazzles so many, God is going to frustrate.

I: — “But surely there’s a genuine human wisdom”, someone objects, “and therefore there has to be a place within the Christian understanding for such genuine wisdom.” Of course there’s a place. The Christian faith doesn’t pretend anything else. Faith neither presupposes nor implies stupidity or wilful ignorance or prejudiced blindness. There is a genuine, creaturely, humanly produced wisdom irrespective of faith.

Think of the wisdom embodied in the sciences, the science of agriculture, for instance. The “Green Revolution” has yielded foodstuffs on a scale our foreparents couldn’t have imagined: new grains, resistant to blight, not to mention hybrids that thrive in adverse soils and climates.

Think of pharmacology and how developments like antibiotic drugs altered the practice of medicine and relieved distresses so quickly as to seem miraculous when the antibiotic drugs first appeared. (For that matter think of the relief accorded millions by something as lowly as the aspirin.) I’m convinced that in a few years we are gong to see developments in laser surgery (or a comparable surgical technology) that will make much contemporary surgical “cutting” appear as primitive as the application of leeches.

Think of the wisdom articulated by a writer like the late Robertson Davies. His grasp of the convolutions of the human psyche, of the manifold dimensions of human nature, of the social dynamics of the smallest hamlet; his grasp here is remarkable and always helpful. (While we are on the topic of literature, let me say that I think the skilful novelist or poet much more penetrating, much more profound – and therefore much more helpful – than the sociologist.)

There’s a human wisdom that is genuinely wise.

In addition, however, there’s a pseudo-wisdom as well. Pseudo-wisdom is clever-sounding shallowness. Never think that because the shallowness is so very shallow it’s also harmless. Pseudo-wisdom can be lethal. The sexual revolution was supposed to bring human fulfilment. It didn’t. Instead it brought sterility (on account of pelvic inflammatory disease), AIDS, psychological jadedness, and worst of all, the inability to form long-term committed relationships.

The drug culture was supposed to give us a heightened consciousness through which we could apprehend the universe more profoundly. It gave us something else.

Pseudo-wisdom tells us that each era of world history is peopled by human beings who are advancing, ever moving toward a cumulative human superiority. Yet the twentieth century has seen slaughter after slaughter: fifty-five million dead in the last Great War alone, “ethnic cleansing” in Cambodia and Yugoslavia and Central Africa that rivals the horror of the holocaust. Anthropologists have uncovered clusters of battered bones and cracked skulls that indicate repeated Amerindian genocides ten thousand years before any Caucasian set foot in the new world. Plainly the murderous outbreaks that we like to regard as epidemic (and rare epidemics at that) are in fact endemic to fallen humankind. Pseudo-wisdom mindlessly repeats such social assumptions as the notion that athletics develop character and forge stronger links among nations. Really? Do you know anyone whose moral stature improved through playing in the NHL? Is there any international sporting event that isn’t immediately co-opted by jingoistic propaganda?

Pseudo-wisdom is just that: pseudo.

There’s a third item to be considered in our discussion of wisdom, what I label “life-smarts.” By “life-smarts” I don’t mean formal academic training. I mean an intuitive grasp of how to handle life: what is evil or dangerous and is therefore to be shunned, what is helpful or wholesome and is therefore to be welcomed, how profound simple pleasures are and are therefore to be cherished. It’s difficult to hoodwink people who possess life-smarts. These people intuitively recognise smokescreen speech and distrust it. They intuitively identify simplistic cure-alls and reject them. Even if they lack tools and training to refute arguments formally they aren’t going to be “fished in.” There’s real wisdom at the level of “life-smarts.”

II: — The apostle wouldn’t deny any of this. Nevertheless, he reminds us, however genuinely wise human wisdom may be it doesn’t save. It doesn’t immerse us in God’s own life. God has made “foolish” (i.e., futile) the wisdom of the world, futile in the sense that however much worldly wisdom can do, it’s stymied with respect to what most needs to be done: set us in the right with God, soak us in the truth of God, enfold us so deeply in the Holy One himself that human speech can only stammer before the wonder of it all. Worldly wisdom, marvellously effective elsewhere, is ineffective here.

Over and over the Hebrew prophets speak with urgency of “knowing God.” Hosea exhorts his people, “Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord.” Jeremiah overhears God say, “I will give them a heart to know that I am the Lord.” Isaiah: “You shall know that I, the Lord, am your Saviour and Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.” To know God isn’t to have our head furnished with religious notions, whether adequate or inadequate. To know God is to find ourselves rendered different on account of our engagement with him. This is knowledge of God. Wisdom, however wise, can’t yield this.

Then what can? The gospel can; the gospel, whose core is Christ crucified. Yet the gospel is precisely what everyone wants to step around. Paul realistically divides the world of religious questers into two camps. Those in camp “A” look for bizarre occurrences, dramatic signs that will dispel unbelief, dramatic signs, be it noted, of the sort that Jesus always refused to give throughout the course of his earthly ministry and refused at the outset when he refused to leap from the roof of the temple and float down unharmed like Mary Poppins. Those in camp “B” want a complex intellectual formula, a brainteaser. Brainteasers may divert us as after-dinner amusement but they don’t save. Yet for those whom God has wooed, those who now embrace the One given the world, Jesus Christ crucified is the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Wisdom: God’s plan and purpose for us.

Power: God’s capacity to achieve his plan and purpose for us.

What is God’s plan and purpose for us? It’s to reconcile us to himself, to ignite our heart from his, to equip us with truth from the mind of him who is Truth, to render us reflectors of his light into every nook and cranny and corner of life. Power, we must be sure to understand, isn’t the capacity to coerce. (The capacity to coerce isn’t power; it’s violence. While power is commonly regarded as the capacity to coerce, such coercion or violence, so far from being synonymous with power, is actually its antithesis.) Power is the capacity to achieve purpose. The paradox of Christian truth is that God’s power is operative in the face of apparent powerlessness; in fact, God’s power is operative, from a human perspective, in the midst of actual powerlessness.

In the crucified One, God’s judgement against us is rendered and is seen to be rendered. Yet in the crucified One too our sin is borne and borne away.

In the crucified One arms are opened wide and an invitation is issued to any and all without distinction and without exception.

In the crucified One the wisdom of God is made manifest and the power of God is rendered effective. For it is in the efficacy of the cross that our sin is dealt with, our defiance crumbled, our faith quickened, our gratitude awakened, our obedience freed. Jesus Christ crucified is the wisdom and power of God, proof of which is wave after wave of rebels like us surrendering to that love which is the source and measure of whatever love we have known from whatever quarter in life.

III: — Where does the word of the cross leave the three kinds of wisdom mentioned earlier?

Pseudo-wise people don’t grasp the seriousness of the human condition. They assume a little patching up here, a little tinkering there, a little more government funding everywhere, and everything will be all right. They don’t grasp what God has done and why it had to be done and how it’s effective. The pseudo-wise need to be shaken up by the explosive word of the gospel.

The genuinely wise admit that humankind has a problem. They know that the problem is deep-seated. The genuinely wise, not surprisingly, marshal the collective wisdom of philosopher, scientist, anthropologist, and literary icon. Yet the genuinely wise can’t make a proper diagnosis of the root human ailment. They can describe it, describe its symptoms, and do so very impressively. But however well they may describe it, they can’t diagnose it; can’t diagnose the nature of humankind’s self-frustration and self-contradiction; can’t penetrate to the ailment itself.

Those possessed of “life-smarts”; these people come closest to intuiting what the problem is and why the event of the cross is effective. They viscerally intuit that something major is out of order, that the disorder goes deeper than any explanation they’ve heard to date. They know that the disorder isn’t even touched by the cavalier “bromides” of the pseudo-wise; they know too that the disorder goes ever so much deeper than the descriptions of the genuinely wise. Yet even the intuitions of those with “life-smarts” can’t penetrate to the diagnosis of a ruptured relationship with God, the consequent incursion of systemic ungodliness, and the innermost self-scuttling – not to mention God’s means of setting all of it right.

I feel I have spoken of the three classes somewhat artificially. It’s not so much that there are three classes or kinds of people; it’s rather that all three types are found mixed up in every one of us. In all of us there are elements of the genuinely wise, the pseudo-wise, and the “life-smart”; which is to say, the fact that all three are found in us at once still can’t do what the gospel alone can do and has done as the gospel has surged throughout the world.

IV: — My highschool science teacher was fond of intoning “Nature abhors a vacuum.” The presence of a vacuum means that anything and everything is drawn into it. Clutter and debris and litter and junk get mixed up in a farrago that is neither attractive nor fruitful. A spiritual vacuum is no different. A spiritual vacuum never remains a vacuum for long.

A few years ago when the cults seemed possessed of eerie militancy it was found that Jewish young people from the most ideationally liberal homes and synagogues were most readily seduced and captured. These young people had had enough religious exposure to render them amenable to “religion”, but not enough substance to equip them to recognise ersatz substitutes. The most dilute religious upbringing – devoid of substance by definition – simply didn’t equip these young people to discern the approach of what could only damage them. While the cults seem relatively in abeyance now, there are still psycho-religious fads that repeatedly “take in” those whose spiritual formation is insufficiently rigorous. Out of concern to exemplify all that the ideationally liberal hold up – the notion that everybody is good at bottom, everybody can be trusted, and everything is to be tolerated (intolerance being the “unforgivable sin” among liberals) – the families of these young people left them with insufficient exposure to that undislodgeable density, that burning luminosity which confronted Moses and Miriam, Rachel and Rebecca, Joel and Jeremiah. There was insufficient acquaintance with the God who possessed such people, whose truth infused them and whose way guided them. Jewish young people devoid of spiritual substance headed the list of North America’s seducible.

There is a dilute churchmanship in Christian circles that leaves people, especially young people, in exactly the same predicament. No vacuum remains a vacuum for long, including a spiritual vacuum. For this reason the church ought not to be puzzled at finding itself facing younger and older people alike who are open to religion but closed to the gospel.

A friend of mine (now dead), an Anglican clergyman and superb Greek scholar, volunteered as a military chaplain during the last Great War. His initial interview didn’t go well. He was told that military chaplains under fire didn’t have time to cross every scholarly “t” and dot every minuscule “i”. “Can you paint the message on a fence?” military authorities asked him. Tell me: have I painted the message on a fence here in Streetsville? Or have I etched it in minutest detail on the head of a pin?

Paul was haunted by the spiritual condition of the congregation in Galatia. With anguish of heart he wrote the people there, “I am in pain until Christ be formed in you.” Christ is going to be formed in any of us only as the message is painted on a fence. “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” – painted on a fence in Corinth this time.

Regardless of the degree and depth of the wisdom we possess and regardless of the richest human resources we have appropriated, no such wisdom and no such resources can ever substitute for him from whom we come, from whom we can’t escape, to whom we must soon render account and therefore to whom we ought to surrender ourselves. Then regardless of how genuinely wise we may have come to be none of our wisdom fills that vacuum which everything else otherwise fills.

The spiritual vacuum must be filled by Jesus Christ crucified, and by him alone.

                                                                                              Victor Shepherd

August 1999

1 Corinthians 3:10-15 

1] It was always the last thing we did in the gymnasium, when we were so tired we could barely remain upright. We stood with our feet together, looked at a spot on the wall, and then rotated our head in as wide a circle as we could, over and over, all the while concentrating on that one spot on the wall. At first we all became dizzy and lost our balance. Gradually we were able to keep standing and keep looking at that spot in front of us, regardless of our dizziness.

We were boxers in training. The coach told us that the point of the exercise was to have us trained to keep looking at our opponent instinctively after we had been staggered by a blow and the lights were going out and we were dizzy. “This little exercise will keep you alive one day”, he told us, “and you will thank me that I insisted you do it.” He was proved right. The day came for all of us — and came more than once — when the training we had undergone kept us looking at our opponent after we’d been hit and the ring was reeling and we had to get through the round.

Boxers aren’t the only people who get “rocked.” Everyone does – which means that Christians do too. One day temptation hurls itself upon us so violently that we can only call it assault. Another day misfortune hits us when we aren’t expecting it at all. Or disappointment sickens us like a skyscraper elevator plummeting out of control. The worst blow of all, the body blow that can leave us in terrible pain, conscious yet helpless, is betrayal: there is no blow like betrayal.

It’s plain that Christians need training. The apostle Paul calls it “training in godliness”. (1 Tim. 4:8) From his exposure to athletic contests he has seen how important training is for athletes. He refers several times in his epistles to the rigorous preparation which the boxer and the wrestler and the runner undergo. “They can’t afford to be soft or self-indulgent or ill-prepared”, he says; “Does anyone think that Christians can afford to be?”

You have asked for a sermon on spiritual discipline. You want to know why training in godliness is necessary, for whom it is necessary, and to what end it is undertaken. You want to know why we have to keep at it until that day when, says Peter, we are crowned with that “crown of glory which never fades”.

2] Perhaps it all sounds a bit too intense for you, even a bit grim. Training in godliness isn’t grim, but it is intense, and it is necessary. Why is it necessary?

Because of our fallen human nature, in the first place. Christians are those in whom the “new creature in Christ” and the “old creature in Adam” war with each other. To be sure, Christians are those who are “born of the Spirit”, in the vocabulary of the New Testament. As Jesus Christ embraced us in his grace we embraced him in faith. We were reconciled to God, given a new standing before God, and given a new nature as well — or as scripture speaks of it, a new heart. None of this is mere pietistic verbiage. We are possessed of a new name and a new nature. Nevertheless, as Martin Luther liked to say, the old man, the old woman, doesn’t die readily, doesn’t die without a struggle; the corpse twitches. We mustn’t forget that Jesus instructs disciples — disciples — to ask for forgiveness every day, just because sin still clings even to disciples. To say that Christians are identified before God as new creatures isn’t to say that the old creature has disappeared; while the old creature isn’t our identity, it is a twitching corpse which can still trip us up.

When I was younger I thought that my depravity was relatively slight, was always in sight, and was therefore easy to keep at bay. Much older now, I am sobered upon being confronted with the arrears of sin that remain in me. As sin-riddled as you have undoubtedly found me to be, can you imagine how I’d look if I were devoid of spiritual discipline? Spiritual discipline will be needed for as long as you and I are Spirit-born children of God whose identity in Christ is contradicted by the hangover of our sinnership. Then spiritual discipline will be needed until we are released from the conflict. Please don’t tell me that all of this sounds too intense. Paul insists that without the most intense training the athlete will find himself disqualified.

Spiritual discipline is needed, in the second place, not only because of what remains “in here”; it is necessary in the second place because of the spiritual conflict which rages “out there”. Let us make no mistake. Our Lord insists that he came to wrest the creation out of the grip of a spirit-opponent whose range is nothing less than cosmic. In the words of the apostle John, he came to “destroy the works of the devil.” (1 John 3:8) To no one’s surprise, then, throughout his public ministry Christ is opposed. To be sure, he’s opposed by political authorities, religious authorities, family, friends, and even disciples. At bottom, however, regardless of the form in which opposition comes to him or the quarter from which it comes, he’s ultimately opposed by the evil one himself. He contends with his foe for every inch of ground that his foe has illegitimately occupied. No occupier retreats willingly; an occupier must be routed. In other words, Christ’s ministry is unrelenting conflict.

Now Christians are those whom the master has enlisted. We are soldiers of Christ, as the NT is unashamed to say. But what use is a frontline soldier who has never been trained? Not only what use is he; how long is he going to last?

During the last war there were two aspects to the training of a submarine commander. One aspect was becoming schooled in the technicalities of submarine warfare: when to launch a torpedo, how close to the target one should be, what to do in assorted emergencies. The second aspect was much more subtle; it was more of the order of intuition. This aspect was more a matter of equipping a submariner with a sixth sense: whether to surface or remain submerged; whether to fight or flee; whether to wait for moonlight or wait for cloudcover. The first aspect, the technical aspect, could be learned out of a book and learned quickly. The second aspect, however, the subtle, intuitive, life-and-death aspect was much harder to come by; it couldn’t be learned out of a book, and it took far longer to acquire. At the beginning of the war inexperienced submarine captains had time to learn the latter aspect. Towards the end of the war there was no time. Not having acquired the subtle intuitions that a submarine commander needs to survive, these fellows didn’t survive; neither did the crews entrusted to them.

So it is with the Christian life in the midst of spiritual conflict. It’s easy to acquire a Christian vocabulary, easy to gain a rudimentary grasp of Christian doctrine. But it takes far more time, far more diligence to gain a spiritual sixth sense; to intuit whether what has been thrust in front of us is an opportunity to be seized or a danger to be avoided, whether what is proposed in the document before the official board is kingdom-building or kingdom-destroying.

Since keeping company with Jesus Christ means that the venue of his ministry is the venue of our ministry, and since the venue of his ministry is ceaseless spiritual conflict, then we need spiritual discipline. Without it shall be of no use to him; without it we shan’t even survive ourselves.

Spiritual discipline is needed for a third reason. The world in which we live is a tough place. The world resists truth, resists righteousness, resists integrity, resists honesty; the world, I have found, perversely resists even love. The world is populated by billions of people, every one of whom is fallen; which is to say, the world seethes with concentrated self-interests, clamouring, competing self-interests, even cut-throat self-interests.

I was asked to attend a meeting in support of a non-profit housing organization that was to build a facility to accommodate eight (count them: eight) head-injured adults. The people to be accommodated would be recovering from head-injuries sustained chiefly through automobile accidents and industrial accidents, as well as through the occasional athletic mishap. The injured would be housed in the facility for approximately six months; after that they would be able to function without special provision.

I went to the meeting. Many people went to the meeting. No doubt in other contexts they would appear decent, considerate, even moderately compassionate. But not on this night; on this night they were determined that the head-injured of Mississauga could freeze to death before they were going to be housed in “our” neighbourhood. If you had ever doubted that the world is a tough place you wouldn’t have been doubting at the conclusion of that meeting. Some people implied that those who have suffered head-injuries (concussions) are slobbering ogres or rapacious molesters around whom no one is safe. Others said that whether dangerous or not, head-injured people are unsightly and would detract from the handsomeness of the Streetsville neighbourhood. Whereupon I asked these people if they thought they could spot a concussion walking down the street. I wasn’t thanked for my question. The woman beside me complained bitterly that the increased traffic would be a huge nuisance. “Increased traffic”, I remarked, “there are only eight people to be accommodated, and none of them is allowed a driver’s licence!” She turned on me in her fury: “So what if they can’t drive. Would you want them living on your street?” One of Mississauga’s councillors had called the meeting. He spoke in support of the scheme. A few days after the meeting a representative from the housing organization told the councillor that since the housing organization had already spent $75,000 on preparatory work, it had to know, before it committed any more money, whether the councillor was going to support the scheme formally at city hall as he had supported it informally at the neighbourhood meeting. “Not only am I not going to support it”, the councillor said in the most startling about-face, “I am going to bury it!”

The Christian life, Christian service, every aspect of our discipleship; it all unfolds in a world which is tough, even treacherous. Spiritual discipline is needed if we are going to do anything besides give up.

I’ve already anticipated the fourth reason for spiritual discipline: to forestall discouragement and capitulation. It mustn’t happen! It won’t happen only as long as we have anticipated it, prepared for it, and stand equipped by the training or discipline which keeps us looking ahead even when we have been rocked.

3] Then in what does spiritual discipline consist?

The first item is prayer. John Calvin was fond of saying, “Prayer is the chief exercise of faith.” He’s right. Prayer is the chief exercise of faith. God commands us to pray. Faith recognises the command of God and is eager to obey him. Not only does faith recognise the command of God; faith understands the command of God, faith knows why prayer is the chief exercise of faith, knows why God can impart to his people through this exercise what he can impart in no other way, knows that God wills only our blessing. Then God’s people must pray consistently, pray habitually, pray believingly.

Even if we were slow to understand that what God commands he commands only for our blessing, it would still be difficult for us to overlook the example of our Lord himself. He prayed, and prayed, and prayed some more. He prayed in marathon sessions before major developments in his life (e.g., the calling of the twelve). He prayed with others in public in the synagogue where he worshipped every Sabbath. He prayed alone on countless occasions. The written gospels depict him going away to a “lonely place a great while before day”, in the words of the gospel-writers, in order to be alone and to pray. What our Lord knew to be essential we can’t pretend to be optional. Since prayer is the chief exercise of faith, believing people are equipped chiefly through prayer.

Remember, you have asked for a sermon on spiritual discipline; not a sermon on ethical rigour or intellectual strictness or psychological resilience. To be sure, spiritual discipline includes all of these, but they, of themselves, will never equip us spiritually. Then if spiritual discipline is what we need above everything else we must pray. Apart from it our Lord himself would plainly have had no ministry, even no life. We cannot do without the very thing that he knew to be his lifeline.

(ii) The second item in spiritual discipline is self-honesty; utter self-honesty. The older I become the more sobered I am at humankind’s capacity for self-deception. As soon as we are tempted, our most rigorous logic becomes the most rigid rationalisation. The logic is still there, all right, but now the logic serves our self-justification. The very thing we were counting on to safeguard us against the seduction of temptation now reinforces the seduction. Thinking that our logical rigour would safeguard us against being dragged into sin, our logical rigour now prevents us from being argued out of sin. Our capacity for self-deception is bottomless.

No doubt you have a question to put to me: if self-honesty is essential, and yet our capacity for self-deception is bottomless, how are we are going to arrive at the self-honesty we need? We shall arrive at it with the help of two instruments. One is scripture. Scripture is the normative witness to Christian faith and life. Scripture is the normative witness to what we must believe and what we must do. Scripture is also a mirror. When we look into it we begin to see where and why and how we have deceived ourselves with respect to our faith and our discipleship. Corrie Ten Boom, the Dutch woman who survived Ravensbruck, a women’s camp that few survived; Corrie managed to smuggle a small pocket-bible with her when she was incarcerated. She read to her fellow-inmates night-by-night, and expounded the text as well. After a while a woman who wasn’t a believer (or at least who hadn’t been when she was incarcerated) said to Corrie, “That book of yours; it is the only book that tells us the truth about ourselves.”

A friend spoke to me of the Air Canada pilot he invited to his cottage for a weekend. The pilot, of course, was on holiday. Holiday or not, right after breakfast the fellow took out his pilot’s and read it for half an hour. He had already mastered it or else he’d never have qualified as a pilot. He had passed an examination in it every year for years. Still, he steeped himself in it every morning. He wanted to keep his instincts razor-sharp in the event of any unusual development. He knew that an in-flight emergency had to be met with instincts trained by relentless study. Now no one is going to say that the pilot is neurotic; no one says he’s obsessive-compulsive; no one even says he’s nervous. All his passengers are glad that he spends half an hour every morning, even on his holidays, with the book he knows inside-out anyway.

For years I have endeavoured to do as much with scripture. Does anyone here want to call me neurotic or obsessive-compulsive or even nervous? Knowing my heart as well as I do, I know that unusual spiritual assault or temptation can be met only with spiritual instincts that have been kept razor-sharp. Only the scripture-normed and scripture-shaped pastor is going to help a congregation. Only the scripture-normed, scripture-shaped Christian is going to help the world.

The second instrument by which we penetrate our self-deception is the company of Spirit-sensitive friends. For years I thought I had privileged access to my own heart and mind. I thought I necessarily knew more about myself, invariably knew more about myself, than anyone else could know about me. When it was suggested that this was not the case I became very defensive and insisted that it was. It was only after much embarrassment and much anguish that I came to admit that there are some settings in which other people know me far better than I know myself. In such settings these people have something to tell me about myself which I should be a fool to ignore; and a fool not chiefly because in ignoring them I shall embarrass myself, but rather because I shall endanger myself. For this reason I shall always need, as you will too, one or two or three soul-mates who are spiritually sensitive, spiritually attuned; friends who are willing to tell me truth about myself to which I am blind; friends from whom I can hear this without knee-jerk defensiveness.

The last item in spiritual discipline is service, especially service in a venue that appears to contradict the truth of God and the reality of his kingdom. Three decades ago the students of the Oxford University Humanist Club hung a huge banner over the doorway of a theological college: “For God so loved the world that — last year 37,000 thalidomide babies were born”. A low blow? Not really. There are developments without number that appear to contradict the truth of God. Why shouldn’t these be drawn to our attention? Spiritual resilience has to be tested; it has to be tested in the midst of developments that appear to contradict the God for whose service our discipline is preparing us.

Such testing will always be essential. A military unit can train and train and train some more. Yet as necessary as training is, no amount of training can substitute for combat experience. The soldier really becomes a soldier only when he’s under fire. Spiritual discipline bears fruit and proves itself fruitful when we are under fire. We are then of even greater usefulness to God in the service of that world which he will not abandon however much it may contradict him.

You asked for a sermon on spiritual discipline. Our enthusiasm for such discipline is the measure of our seriousness as disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ.

                                                                     Victor Shepherd

March 1999

1^st Corinthians 6:9-11

John Newton began school when he was seven years old.  He left school two years later.  At age eleven he went to sea with his father, who was captain of a merchant ship. He wasn’t long finding out how rough life was at sea, among sailors, in the 1700s.  Samuel Johnson, English man of letters, knew well the horrible state of English prisons, yet Johnson insisted that life on a ship was worse than life in a prison: the food was worse, the company was worse, the accommodation was worse, and in addition there was the constant danger of drowning.

Sailors ate food in various stages of rot (thanks to the dampness) from the moment the ship put to sea.  If their biscuits were only moderately rotten, the biscuits contained insects called weevils that tasted bitter.  If the biscuits were more rotten, they contained large maggots with black heads, and these tasted fatty and cold.  During one seven-year period in the mid-1700s, the British Navy raised 185,000 men for sea duty. Two-thirds of them died of disease, often disease related to malnutrition.  Many died also from syphilis.

Not surprisingly, sailors were regarded as the scum of the earth. They were brutal, vicious, morally dissolute.         Newton , we should note, felt entirely at home with these fellows.  He prided himself on being without moral restraint.         What’s more, he never missed an opportunity of urging such lack of restraint upon others. He was especially proud of the fact that that he was so very vile and vulgar that other sailors, scarcely paragons of virtue themselves, couldn’t stand him.

When Newton was nineteen or twenty years old a British press gang captured him – kidnapped him, in other words – and took him on board a warship.  At this point in the history of Britain , warships always needed men. Volunteers were few, with the result that the government paid roving gangs of thugs to kidnap any unwary young men (the latter were usually found in taverns) and deliver them to Royal Navy warships.

Newton quickly learned that while living conditions on board merchant ships were deplorable, living conditions on board warships were worse.  A common sailor could be beaten for smiling at an officer.  Every officer carried a small whip with which to strike sailors.  If a sailor ever struck an officer, however, the sailor was hanged immediately before the entire crew.

After several months’ service on a warship Newton waited until the ship was in port; then he deserted.  He had walked only a few miles when another press gang overtook him and dragged him back to the ship.  The captain had him flogged mercilessly.  He was carried below decks where the ship’s doctor poured vinegar into his wounds, along with alcohol, salt water and hot tar.  Newton lapsed into a coma and nearly died.

By now the captain of the warship was fed up with the twenty-year old incorrigible, and transferred him to a merchant ship engaged in the slave trade.  Soon Newton was working for a European slave trader on the African coast.   Before long the trader suspected Newton of dishonesty. Whenever the trader went inland for several days (usually to unload trade goods and procure slaves from inland regions), he chained Newton to the ship’s deck, leaving him with one pint of rice per day, fresh water, and a pile of chicken entrails. Newton baited fish-hooks with the entrails, caught a few fish, and ate them raw. One day a passing merchant ship unchained him and hired him on as a sailor.  Newton was at sea once again.

At age twenty-five he became captain of a slave ship. Over the next four years he made three round trips.         A round trip consisted of three legs: first leg, from England to Africa, the ship stocked with trade goods for the African natives, as well as with chains, neck collars, handcuffs and thumbscrews (a torture device) that were to be used by African natives (be it noted) who were selling into slavery fellow-Africans from rival tribes who had been defeated in tribal warfare and were now, in effect, prisoners of war. The second leg of the trip was the voyage from Africa to the Caribbean with slaves in the hold. The third leg was the trip back to England with molasses and rum. Each round trip took a year and three months.

Needless to say, the most reprehensible part of the trip was the long middle-passage from Africa to the Caribbean . The slave holds on ships were pens only two feet high. The slaves were laid out side-by-side like fireplace logs, then chained to one another, 600 per ship. There were no toilet facilities and no ventilation.  The stench was indescribable.   It was said that if you were downwind of a slave ship you could smell it twenty miles away. In good weather the slaves were brought up on deck (still chained to one another), hosed down with sea water, then rinsed lightly with fresh.   Corpses were dumped overboard as instant fish food.  Occasionally ship captains threw healthy slaves overboard in order to collect insurance. As a means of keeping sailors reasonably content, captains allowed them to rape black women at will. Newton himself was no stranger to this activity.  As captain of the slave ship, he had his pick of any African woman and his pick of any number of them.  Concerning his slaving days he later wrote laconically, “I was sunk into complacency with the vilest of wretches.”

How did it all end?   Six years before he was to leave the slave trade (i.e., two years before he had even entered it) Newton ’s ship had been caught in a violent storm off Newfoundland . He and his crewmates pumped until they nearly collapsed.   Their ship barely made it back to England . He began to think about the manner in which his life was unfolding.   He became aware that as repugnant as he was to many people, he was vastly more repugnant to God. He tells us that at this point he prayed for the first time in years.

Six years, including all his slaving days, were to pass before the seed sown during the near-fatal storm was to bear fruit. Six years it took for the seed to germinate, grow, mature, become fruitful.  But when the fruit appeared it was magnificent.  He came to throbbing faith in Jesus Christ, and never looked back. Now his long-cherished cynicism, vulgarity and unbelief fell away from him like filthy clothing that one never wants to see again.

Having had only two years of formal schooling, Newton set about educating himself. Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac: he taught himself them all and mastered them.  In no time his written English was the envy of those who appreciate fine prose. (While living in Africa he had mastered the first six books of Euclidean geometry, tracing the geometric figures in the sand.) And of course the public quickly discovered that his poetic gifts – he had never done anything with them, never having had anything to poeticize about – soon found expression in hymns the church will never be without. (We should note that the hymn Newton wrote in gratitude for his wife, Mary Catlett, on their first anniversary contained twenty-six stanzas.)

Newton applied to the Anglican ministry, but was turned down on the grounds that he lacked a university degree.         A sympathetic bishop, however, recognizing Newton ’s faith, brilliance and abilities, ordained him.  By now he was thirty-nine years old and had been away from the slave trade for ten years.

People flocked to hear him preach, but not because he was an outstanding speaker. In fact his preaching was clumsy. They sought him out, however, inasmuch as they knew him to be transparent to the grace and power and purpose of God. In short, they knew he could help them in their own venture in the Christian life. His modest-sized book (now in paperback), Letters of Christian Counsel, has guided earnest Christians for 200 years.

Newton spent the rest of his life campaigning against the slave trade.  Until he died he remained haunted by the misery he had unleashed in the world. He came to speak of the slave trade as “a business at which my heart now shudders.”

Towards the end of his life Newton was blind and forgetful, senile in fact, frequently forgetting in mid-sentence where it was supposed to end, and unable to recover the thread of his sermon. Several people suggested that he give up preaching.  “What?” he hurled at them, “Shall the old African blasphemer stop while he can speak?” In 1806 he preached his last sermon at a benefit service for widows and orphans of the Battle of Trafalgar.  He died on 21^st December 1807 .

What can we take home today from our acquaintance with John Newton?

[1] First, we must understand that there is such a thing as ungodliness, and it does result in human degradation; and such degradation ought not to be disguised or labelled anything else, for the sake of truth.

We used to live in a truth culture.  A truth culture asks two questions: What is? (i.e., what’s the nature of ultimate reality) and What is right? (i.e., what ought we to do in light of what ultimate reality is.)  Now, however, we live in a therapy culture.  A therapy culture asks one question only: How does it feel?  A therapy culture disdains any discussion of truth and the claims of truth. Christians, however, will never endorse a therapy culture to the detriment of a truth culture.

In a therapy culture the gospel is merely a matter of feeling, a matter of taste.  Some people have a taste for “religion”; others have little or no taste for “religion.” And in any case there’s no disputing taste.

Christians know, however, that where truth is denied the claims of truth are ignored.  Where God as the ens realissimum is disdained then there is no obligation on anyone; all we need do is indulge ourselves since the only consideration is how it all feels.

Consider the following.

FIRST GENERATION: people are possessed of authentic faith and they do attempt to honour claim upon them of the God they worship.  They may not always do what is right, but they know what is right.

SECOND GENERATION: living faith has disappeared.  Jesus Christ is too specific, too concrete, too relentless and too demanding. Faith is jettisoned, but a sincere moral concern is upheld.  If you ask these people why humans in general ought to be ethically concerned they can’t answer profoundly.  They can only say something unhelpful such as “Because we should; that’s all.”

THIRD GENERATION: here both living faith and moral concern have disappeared.  All that remains is narcissism: everything in the universe exists to serve me, my pleasure, and my comfort.  What doesn’t serve me, my pleasure and my comfort has no claim upon me.

The guiding principle here isn’t “What ought I to do?” Rather it’s “What can I get away with?”  The most glaring feature of this outlook is an enormous sense of entitlement. I am entitled to, have a right to, anything and everything that’s going to maximize my pleasure and comfort.

Friederich Nietzsche, the philosopher whom every first-year university student wants to read, said “If God is dead (and for Nietzsche God was dead) then everything is permitted.”  Narcissistic entitlement can’t wait to get God dead.

God, however, refuses to die.  Instead he acts. In the first chapter of his Roman letter the apostle Paul asserts that God gives people who repudiate him the consequences of that repudiation.  Three times in Romans 1; in verses 24, 26, and 28, Paul writes chilling words: “God gave them up; God gave them up to their impurity, to the dishonouring of their bodies among themselves; God gave them up to dishonourable passions; God gave them up to a base mind and to improper conduct.” We must be sure to note that Paul never says “God gave up on them.” God doesn’t give up on people. The truth is, because God doesn’t give up on them; because God cares about them more than they care about themselves, God gives them up.  Gives them up to what? Gives them up to, hands them over to, the consequences of their repudiation of him.

Many folk, I have found, dismiss as infantile all notions of God’s anger, God’s judgment.  They assume that the church upholds the notion that something innocent in itself – card-playing, for instance – is deemed to be “sin”. Sin is said to mobilize God’s judgement. Therefore God’s judgement is mobilized by something trivial.  People snicker.

The point to be remembered is that it isn’t something trivial that mobilizes God’s judgement.  It isn’t even that conduct which we rightly label “sins” that mobilizes God’s judgement. It’s human defiance of God, disobedience to God, contempt for him, facile dismissal of him – this is what mobilizes God’s judgement.  What we label “sins” is the consequence of God’s judgement.  It’s our prior, deep-seated unbelief that provokes God and precipitates his judgement. Once his judgement is operative, God hands us over to the consequences of our unbelief: “sins”.   His purpose in handing us over; his purpose in giving us up to “sins”, the consequence of our unbelief; his purpose here is a wake-up call.

And didn’t his wake-up call wake up John Newton? In his shallow years of unbelief Newton boasted that he could out-gross the grossest; he could out-debauch the most debauched. His doing so, of course, occurred just because God had given him up to… ­­ – without ever having given up on him.  The wake-up call worked. One day Newton became as disgusted with himself as many others were with him.  Because God had given him up to the disgusting consequences of his unbelief he knew that God had never given up on him.  He repented, repudiated his repudiation of God, and “came home.”

What does Newton teach us? – that ungodliness ends in degradation; that degradation doesn’t arouse God’s anger but is rather the consequence of God’s anger visited upon unbelief. We must understand that just because God doesn’t give up on us he does give us up to the consequences of our repudiation of him, and all of this for the sake of jarring us awake to the nature and scope of our folly.

[2] Finally, and pre-eminently, Newton recalls us to the truth that Jesus Christ can re-start, revolutionize any person’s life. Newton didn’t finish his adult life as he began it.  The degradation into which he plunged he didn’t splash around in for the rest of his life. He proved that the grace of God is “amazing” just because there is no one, however, wretched, who can’t be put on her feet, pointed down a new road, knowing a new Lord, living from a new relationship, singing a new song, and facing a new future.

In a few minutes Rachel Miller is going to sing “Amazing Grace” for us. I don’t care to hear it sung – usually. It’s not because I disagree with anything in the hymn.  I endorse the theology of the hymn without reservation.  I don’t care to hear it sung, rather, because it’s been sentimentalized. It has become folk music, sung mindlessly out of social familiarity without any appreciation of what it’s about. It’s usually sung in contexts that have nothing to do with faith – like the halftime show at a football game. It pains me to hear Newton ’s wonder at God’s amazing grace reduced to entertainment.

But of course here in Schomberg, at worship, we aren’t singing it as entertaining folk music. We are singing it because we have been sobered afresh as we have pondered the truth that God’s grace is amazing just because it is God’s.  Grace isn’t our invention, our prescription, another human attempt at self-medication that ends in self-poisoning.  We extol God’s amazing grace just because we know that his grace, and his grace alone, can do what nothing else and no one else can accomplish; namely, transmute, transplant the human heart.

Everything we do in church-life; every cent we donate; every jab we cheerfully absorb: we do it all for one reason.         We want to continue holding up that amazing grace whereby anyone’s life can begin again; anyone can be turned around, now victorious where she had always known defeat.  Everything we do here we do for the sake of this.

I often think that the church today has largely lost confidence right here.  It hasn’t always been so. Whenever the church has surged ahead it has always done so riding the wave of its experience of God’s grace and the capacity of that grace to make the profoundest difference to life.

When the apostolic church surged ahead, one of the places its surge appeared was in Corinth , a city infamous for its debauchery.  The Christians in Corinth had emerged from that background. Paul reminded them, “Don’t be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor sexual perverts, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God . And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” (1^st. Cor. 6:9-11) “Such were some of you.” Were, but are no longer; were, but are not now; were, and need never be again.

I see no reason to doubt or dispute that such a grace-wrought turnaround can happen instantaneously.  I also see no reason to think it has to happen instantaneously.  It took six years for Newton ; six years from the time he was stabbed awake until he had repudiated everything that contradicted his grasp of the gospel.  And if it takes sixty years for some of us?  All that matters is that it occur.

For then our children, or our children’s children, will say of us, “They were washed; they were sanctified; they were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.”

                                                                                                Victor Shepherd 

November 2006

1 Corinthians 10:11

I: — Everyone is aware that technology is forever depersonalising life. As technology reaches farther into our daily lives, it is felt that spontaneity, freedom, self-expression decrease. We don’t like this. We object to technological domination. We seek to recover what is authentically human. We look for an oasis in life, a luxuriant space in life where the aridity of technology can’t overtake us. We want to find some aspect of life where spontaneity and freedom and self-expression can flourish.

One such oasis, safe from technological dehumanization, has been thought to be sex. Sex is one glorious oasis where we can be free of technology, one oasis where our humanity can thrive, one place where freedom can blossom. Let’s just “do it” and enjoy it and glory in it.

With what result? With the result that in no time at all we have technicized sex! Technology is invoked to help us have better sex. Now there are lotions, potions, pills, foods, underwear, body-paints – all of them sure-fire technologies. Every popular magazine from Reader’s Digest to Chatelaine has a “how-to” article per issue on better sex.

Better sex was supposed to result as we fled from technology. Now better sex is supposed to result as we pursue technology. What’s more, better sex is supposed to rehumanize us.

The truth is, the preoccupation with better sex makes us rely on technology even as we are supposed to be fleeing technology. The contradiction here renders sex dehumanizing.

Furthermore, while technology and sexual expression are supposed to be antithetical, it is plain that they feed off each other: after all, sex is being technicized increasingly, while technology is being sexualized increasingly. (Don’t we use sex to sell such technologies as computers, outboard motors and kitchen appliances?)

It seems that we are caught in a vortex we can’t escape. Our protest against technology intensifies our addiction to technology. Our attempt at recovering the authentically human causes us to forfeit the authentically human. Our efforts at rehumanizing ourselves end in dehumanizing ourselves.

How are we ever going to get beyond our imprisonment here and its self-contradiction?

Think for a minute about labour-saving devices. Technology is supposed to spare us the dehumanization of drudge-labour. But does labour-saving technology mean that we work any less? Does it mean that our work is any less distressing? Does it mean that work is any less the occasion of frustration or futility? A farmer with a tractor doesn’t work less or work less frustratingly than a farmer with a horse; he manages to get more acres ploughed. A fisherman with a steel-hulled trawler doesn’t work less than a fisherman with a wooden dory; he manages to catch more fish. In all of this human existence is made more human! (A footnote about the fisherman: technology has enabled the fisherman to catch so much fish that now – in Newfoundland at least – there are no more fish for him to catch. The result is that a cherished way of life has disappeared and the fishing community is more dehumanized than ever!)

Think for a minute about the mass media. The mass media do many things. For one, they create the illusion of personal involvement. As people watch news clips about victims of earthquakes in Haiti or victims of urban overcrowding in Mexico City they unconsciously delude themselves into thinking that they are personally involved. They now think that passivity is activity. They equate their boob-tube passivity with activity, and talk thereafter as if they were involved!

In the second place the mass media persuade us that we are all on the edge of a new society. President Lyndon Johnson kept talking about the “Great Society”. Where is it? What was great about it? He meant that his presidency was the cutting edge of greater a society. Greater than what? Better than whose? Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau kept talking about “The Age of Aquarius”. His pet cliché was “The land is strong”. He meant that the land was newly strong, strong in a way it never was before.

Why would anyone think we are on the edge of a “new society”? What is the evidence for it? As long as the image is created of a “new society or a “great society” or a “land that is strong”; as long as the image is created the reality will never have to be delivered! What conscienceless falsification! What cynical exploitation of gullible people!

While we are talking about dehumanization we might as well mention the mass media and trivialization. The mass media bring before us pictures of starving children with protruding bellies together with pictures of mint-scented mouthwash. Doesn’t this juxtaposition trivialize starvation and the suffering born of it? Recently I was listening to the radio. The news broadcast (supposedly a broadcast of events of immense human significance) was preceded by three back-to-back advertisements: a new kind of candy, pita bread sandwiches now available in Severn-Eleven stores, and Astroglide (Astroglide being a super-slippery vaginal lubricant). What is the human significance of the news when the news is preceded by such trivia? Trivialization? What do the mass media do better?

In American newspapers the Donald and Ivana Trump hanky-panky displaced reports on the reunification of Germany. Where is our humanity in the midst of such trivialization, which trivialization has so thoroughly victimized most people that they cannot recognize it?

Where is our humanity? In view of the fact that everything which claims to augment it and preserve is appears only do diminish it, what are we going to do? Where, how, are we going to be authentically human?

Since we have been thinking about news we might as well ask ourselves whether the news is even new. Recently the lead item in the newscast described the shooting of nine people in British Columbia. Is this new? There are dozens of multiple shooting every year.

The depredations in Bosnia are front-page news. But are they new? At the turn of the century the Turks slew the Armenians and the British slew the Afrikaners. Later everybody slew everybody in Europe. More recently the Americans ignited Viet Namese children with jellied gasoline and gloated as the torment couldn’t be assuaged. So what’s new about Bosnia?

The apostle Paul tells us (Acts 17:21) that the people of Athens “spent their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.” The Athenians were “news junkies”. But none of it was new! After all, what can the depraved heart and mind, turned in on itself do besides reproduce itself?

Neither is there anything new in the microcosm of the individual. When we look into individual human hearts we find people accusing themselves (as surely as they are accused by others), sinking all the way down into self-loathing. When they can no longer endure their self-loathing they “wake up” and exclaim, “Hey! I’m not that bad! I’m no worse than anyone else! In fact, after a moment’s reflection I’m sure I’m better than most!” Fleeing from self-loathing now, they flee into self-righteousness. Self-righteous people regard themselves as fine company. The problem is, their company can’t stand them. After a while the self-righteous begin to ask themselves why no one else can stand them. Soon they get the point: others can’t stand them just because they are thoroughly obnoxious. Then they begin the slide down into self-loathing – and the cycle starts all over.

How do we break the cycle? How do we learn the truth about ourselves and get off the teeter-totter?

When people are jabbed they feel they have to jab back. Their honour is at stake. Their ego-strength is at stake. Their identity is at stake. If someone uses a flame-thrower on them, they have to retaliate with their own flame-thrower. If they don’t, they will be regarded as wimps, will come to regard themselves as wimps, and in any case may feel themselves to be wimps already. But at all costs they mustn’t appear to be wimps. Therefore the retaliatory flame-thrower has to be fired up.

But of course whenever different parties are wielding flame-throwers there are many seared hearts and many smouldering hears. Isn’t there a better way to live? Where is it? How do we find it?

II: — There are those who have exemplified a better way. Jacques Ellul was a professor of law at the University of Bordeaux when German forces occupied France. Ellul immediately joined the French resistance movement. Working underground by night, he did all he could to aid the cause of the resistors: he sabotaged German military vehicles, disrupted communications, and so on. Then one of his law-students betrayed him to the Gestapo. Friends learned of the betrayal and whisked him out of Bordeaux to the French countryside where farmers hid him as a farm-labourer. He continued his resistance activities from the new “home”.

Any member of the French resistance who was caught was tortured unspeakable. (All of this made famous by the notorious Klaus Barbie.) In fact, French resistors were tortured so badly that the British government pleaded with the French resistors to quit: the effect of their efforts was very slight (the German war-machine scarcely inconvenienced by it) while the penalty for being caught was atrocious. Ellul refused to quit. He said that to quit (even though not quitting was terribly dangerous) would mean that he had acquiesced in the struggle against evil; to quit would mean that he had surrendered to Satan; to quit would mean that fear of pain had triumphed over vocation to the kingdom; to quit, he said, would mean that he had forfeited his humanity. And so he didn’t quit, despite terrible risks.

After the war Ellul learned of the treatment accorded war-time collaborationists. (Collaborationists were those French men and women who cooperated with the German occupation in hope of saving their own skin. When Germany didn’t win, French citizens howled for the scalps of the collaborationists.) The French government treated these people brutally. Whereupon Ellul stepped out of his law-school professorial robes and became the lawyer representing the collaborationists. He defended the very people who would gladly have consigned him to torture and death during the war. All of a sudden Ellul went from being a wartime hero (brave resistance fighter) to a peacetime bum (public defender of French scum).

Why did he do this? How was he able to do this? He declared that he lived in a new creation; he lived in a new order where standards, expectations, assumptions were entirely different from those of the old order. He noted that virtually everyone clung to the old order even though God’s judgement had doomed it, while virtually nobody dwelt in the new order, even though God’s blessing had established it.

Then Ellul said something more. He said he was tired of hearing people discuss faith in terms of belief. Faith isn’t a matter of what we believe or say we believe or think we might believe; faith is what we do by way of answering the questions God puts to us. When God questions us we have to answer. Verbal answers won’t suffice. Verbal answers are so far from faith that they are an evasion of faith. When God draws us into the light of that new creation which he has caused to shine with startling brightness, then either we do something that mirrors this new creation or we are possessed of no faith at all, regardless of how piously we talk or how religiously we behave. Either we do the truth or we have no use for Jesus Christ at all and we should stop pretending anything else.

And so brother Jacques provided a legal defence to spare the people who would never have spared him a year earlier.

In 2 Corinthians 5:17 Paul says – what does he say? “If any man be in Christ he is a new creature” (KJV). The RSV text reads, “If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation. (This is better). Better yet is the NRSV: “If anyone is in Christ there is a new creation“. The difference between “creature” and “creation” is significant. I am certainly a creature, but I am not the creation; I am not the entire created order. The Greek word for “creature is KTISMA; the word for “creation” is KTISIS. Paul uses the latter work, KTISIS, creation. The NEB captures it perfectly. “When anyone is united to Christ, there is a new world; the old order has gone, and a new order has already begun…”.

The truth is, Paul has written an elliptical sentence, a sentence without a verb. Literally the apostle says, “If anyone in Christ – new creation! – the old has gone…”. Paul would never deny that the man or woman who is united to Christ is a new creature; he would never deny this. But neither is this what he is saying in 2 Cor. 5:17! Paul would never deny J.B. Phillips’ translation of the verse: “If a man is in Christ, he becomes a new person altogether.” He would never deny the truth of this; but this isn’t what he’s saying in this text. The apostle is declaring that to be bound to Jesus Christ in faith is to be aware of a new creation, a new order; to see it, glory in it, live in it, live from it, live for it.

Unquestionably Ellul lived in this new order. Do we? Whether we do or don’t is never indicated by what we say, insists Ellul; whether we do or don’t is announced by what we do. What we do is how we answer the questions God puts to us. Needless to say the pre-eminent question God puts to us is, “Where do you live?”

Centuries before Ellul the apostle Paul, plus so many others in the primitive church, knew where they lived. For this reason the apostle had startling advice to give to Philemon concerning Onesimus.

Onesimus was a slave. He stole from his master, Philemon, and then ran away. In the days of the Roman Empire a runaway slave was executed as soon as he was discovered. Onesimus surfaced in the Christian community in Rome, no doubt assuming that Christians wouldn’t turn him in. Under the influence of Paul, Onesimus came to faith and repented of his theft.

To Onesimus Paul said, “you had better high-tail it back to Philemon before the police department catches up with you, or else you will be hanged.” To Philemon (who had earlier come to faith under Paul’s ministry in Asia Minor) Paul said, “I am sending Onesimus back to you, sending my very heart.”

People today excoriate Paul, “Why did he send Onesimus back at all?” For the simple reason that either Onesimus went back or Onesimus was going to be executed. Let’s hear what else Paul wrote to Philemon “I am sending Onesimus back to you, sending my very heart. Take him back. But don’t take him back as a slave; take him back as a beloved brother…. Receive him as you would receive me.” As Philemon would receive Paul? Paul was a citizen of Rome! Then Philemon must receive his runaway, light-fingered slave as he would receive a citizen and a free man.

On the one hand the legal status of Onesimus was still “slave”, since his slave-status was something only the Roman government could alter. On the other hand, Onesimus was going back to Philemon not as a slave but as a family-member. “Take him back no longer as a slave”, wrote Paul, “take him back as brother in the flesh and in the Lord.” Because Onesimus was a brother in the Lord he was therefore to be cherished as a “brother in the flesh”, as a blood-relative, a family-member.

Inasmuch as the primitive church lacked political “clout” it couldn’t do anything about overturning slavery as an institution. Yet because the primitive church lived in the new creation, a new order, it disregarded the institution of slavery and looked upon Philemon (aristocratic) and Onesimus (low-born) as blood-brothers. And so the institution of slavery (unquestionably a feature of the old order) was subtly sabotaged as Christians held up the new order.

Let us never forget that Aristotle – whom some regard as the greatest philosopher of the ancient world – maintained that a slave was merely an animated tool that had the disadvantage of needing to be fed. Aristotle maintained that as well that a woman was an odd creature half-way between animal and male human. Yet Jesus addressed women as the equal of any male! Luke especially cherished this fact about Jesus, and so Luke’s gospel contains thirteen stories about women found nowhere else. Paul insisted not that wives subject themselves to their husbands, but that husbands and wives subject themselves to each other “out of reverence for Christ.” (Eph. 5:20) The gospel annihilates male dominance!

Jesus Christ brings a new order with him. He is Lord of this new order. And he makes us new by calling us into it.

New? How new? What do we mean by “new”? When I was in India I was startled by the good condition of the countless 1956 Fiat automobiles that scooted everywhere. Then someone told me that these cars were not forty years old. Many were brand new. The car manufacturers in India have never changed the machinery that makes 1956-model Fiats. Every car that the factory produces is a brand-new copy of the same old car!

A brand-new copy of the same old thing. Ellul maintains that this is what the world mistakenly calls new: a recent copy of the same old thing.

There are two Greek words for “new”: NEOS and KAINOS. NEOS means quantitatively new, chronologically new, merely more recent; KAINOS, on the other hand, means qualitatively new, genuinely new, new in substance.

Scripture insists that the qualitatively new, the genuinely new, is found only in Christ. Jesus Christ is new (kainos) creature himself; he brings with him a genuinely new creation; he is Lord of new creation and new creature; he summons us to join him under his Lordship and live in a new order as new people.

Of all the verses in scripture that move me few move me more than 1Corinthians 10:11, where Paul speaks of Christians as those “upon whom the end of the ages has come.” The apostle uses “end” in both senses of the word: end as termination, and end as fulfilment. In Jesus Christ the fulfilment of the creation has come; and because its fulfilment has come, the old creation, old order is now terminated. Since the fulfilment of the creation has come, and since the termination of the old is underway right now, why aren’t we living in the new instead of in the old? Paul says that Christians live in the new by definition. Then the only thing for us to do is to live out what we already live in.

III: — You asked for a sermon on the authority of scripture. Scripture is the normative witness to all that we have pondered this morning. Scripture is not the new creation itself; not the new creation, not the new creature, not the Lord of new creation and creature. Scripture is merely the witness to all of this, yet the indispensable witness to it. Apart from scripture’s testimony it is impossible for us to know of new creation, new creature, and Lord of both; apart from scripture it is impossible for us to see the truth , to grasp the reality, to glory in a new world, to repudiate the old, to live out what we are called to live in. Because scripture uniquely attests what is genuinely new, apart form scripture the best that human existence can hold out for us is the most recent copy of the same old thing.

But to hear and heed the testimony of scripture is to refuse to settle for this; to hear and heed the testimony of scripture is to hear and heed him to whom it points: Jesus Christ our Lord. To hear and heed him is to find ourselves knowing, cherishing, exemplifying that new “world” which he has brought with him.

Jacques Ellul wouldn’t settle for the most recent copy of the same old thing. The French government and the French citizenry hailed him as hero one day and bum the next. Ellul couldn’t have cared less. He know what’s real. The apostle Paul wouldn’t settle for the most recent copy of the same old thing. He knew that to be united to Christ is to live in that new order which Christ brings with him. The Roman government condemned Paul. He couldn’t have cared less. He knew what’s real.

I too know what’s real. What’s real is the end of the ages now upon us. What’s real is a new heaven and new earth in which righteousness dwells (to quote Peter now instead of Paul). I know too that it is only through the testimony of scripture, only as the Spirit of God vivifies this testimony and illumines my mind and thaws my heart, that the really real will continue to shine so luminously for me that I shall never be able to pretend anything else.

Ellul died in 1996. Peter and Paul died 2000 years ago. All three have joined the “great cloud of witnesses” that surrounds us now. All three cherished scripture as the normative testimony to “that kingdom which cannot be shaken”. (Hebrews 12:28)

Faithfully they kept that testimony. And now the Lord of that testimony keeps them.

                                                   Victor A. Shepherd

1 Corinthians 11:23-26

“All my life I have been confused about the Lord’s Supper”, the parishioner told me at the door of the church.         I felt better right away. I had just finished preaching on this very topic.  Surely she would tell me with her next breath that the sermon she had just heard had evaporated her likely confusion as surely as the morning sun dispels fog. “And I am still confused!”, she said as she moved away.  Since I have been in Streetsville for one and one half decades it is fitting that I try again.

I understand why people are confused.  They have always been confused.  Do you know how the expression “hocus pocus” arose?  The Latin for “This is my body”, the words our Lord pronounced at the Last Supper; the Latin equivalent is, “Hoc est meum corpus”.  In the middle ages most people didn’t know what they were mumbling; they mumbled the words so quickly that “Hoc est meum corpus” came out as “hocus pocus.”  And when Holy Communion or the Lord’s Supper was celebrated in that era, it was hocus pocus for most of the people.  The truth is, many people today continue to look upon it as hocus pocus.

We want to move beyond this. In order to get beyond the hocus pocus we should begin with the writings of Dr. Luke. In Luke’s writings ordinary meals loom larger than anywhere else in the New Testament.  (Ordinary meals; not ritual meals, ordinary meals.)  One-fifth of Luke’s gospel and his Acts of the Apostles have to do with eating; that is, one-fifth of Luke’s material concerns events in the life of Jesus where Jesus eats with others, where they eat following something he does for them or where parables and sayings have to do with food. If we are to understand what the Lord’s Supper is about, we should begin with the everyday, ordinary meals which Jesus shared with so many different people.

I: — The first point Luke makes about all this food appears obvious yet is profound; namely, WE EAT IN ORDER TO LIVE.  Food is essential to bodily existence.  Human beings are not disembodied spirits.  We need to eat and should eat.  Only a false spirituality, an unbiblical spirituality, an unchristian asceticism disdains food.  To be sure we do not live by bread alone; at the same time, without bread we do not live at all.

There are furthest-reaching physical consequences to food — or its absence. Without food people develop bone disorders and diseases proliferate.  Without nourishment the human brain does not develop and the undernourished child risks permanent mental impairment.

There are also psychological consequences to food — or its absence.  The thinking of hungry people is very different from the thinking of well-fed people. Hungry people are much easier to prod into drastic action.  It’s understandable that underfed people are much quicker to embrace totalitarian governments. It’s understandable that underfed people — now desperate — are ready to do anything, however extreme.

One of my acquaintances was an officer in the Canadian army during the last great war. One day he and his driver were eating tinned fish when a group of wretchedly poor Italian children gathered around the jeep, eyes fixed on the two men, waiting. The Canadians didn’t know what the children were waiting for.  When the two officers finished eating they flipped the empty tin out of the jeep. Whereupon the children savaged each other in order to get a trickle of fish oil from an empty tin. I have no difficulty understanding the hungry people will readily exchange political freedom for food, exchange virtue for food, exchange simple decency for food, exchange loyalty for food, exchange anything for food.

A hungry body twists the mind’s thinking, and therein twists the entire person. Luke knows this.  He reminds us that we are to pray for food every day.  He recounts the story of the feeding of the multitudes.  We eat in order to live. The Lord’s Supper reminds us constantly that without food, ordinary food, people are warped. It reminds us that God has promised to provide food.

II: — Yet Luke knows too that food does not meet all human needs.  There are deeper needs which can be met only by fellow human hearts and minds. And there are deepest needs which can be met only by God himself.

Everywhere in Luke’s writings people whose hearts ache with a hunger only God can satisfy find their heart-hunger met in Jesus Christ.  When people do find their heart-hunger met in him, they eat; that is, they eat as a celebration.         Now they are not eating in order to live; they are living in order to eat, in order to celebrate, in order to party.         Food facilitates festivity, and the festival is in order because they rejoice in their fellowship with the One who has blessed them.

We who know ourselves grasped by our Lord can only celebrate.  Zacchaeus illustrates this transparently.  Jesus revolutionizes the man’s life.  As Zacchaeus finds his life moving in a new direction, sustained by his new friend, Jesus exclaims, “Today salvation has come to this house!” And then they go off to eat together. Wherever Jesus eats with people; wherever these people eat with him, the meal is a visible declaration of Paul’s announcement, “Now is the day of salvation”. Note: the meal Jesus eats with Zacchaeus is an ordinary meal.  And this ordinary meal, because graced by Jesus himself, announces “Now is the day of salvation”.

We must be sure to give the word ‘salvation’ its full weight.  It doesn’t mean that people have been made to feel better or helped a bit. IT MEANS THAT WE HAVE BEEN DELIVERED FROM REAL PERIL. If We are not delivered from real danger, then the word ‘salvation’ is a silly exaggeration. If a non-swimmer overturns a canoe in twelve inches of water and is helped to her feet by a kind friend, we would never say that her friend save her.  But if a non-swimmer overturns a canoe in one hundred feet of water, the vocabulary of being saved is no exaggeration.  let us not deceive ourselves.  Ultimate loss is possible.  if it weren’t, then dozens of our Lord’s parables would have no point. The name “Jesus” is a Greek form of the Hebrew name “Yehoshuah”, and “Yehoshuah” means “God-to-the-rescue”.  Jesus is friend of sinners only because he is first saviour of sinners. In clinging to him I shall be spared a condemnation which both he and his Father endorse.  Because of the provision made for me in the cross I can be spared it. And because I entrust myself to the crucified One I am spared it.  As a believer who knows he has been spared final loss I shall surely find myself moved to heart-felt gratitude and glad obedience for as long as there is breath in me.

Food is eaten when the younger son comes home from the far country.  His father cries, “Dead! – and now alive!         Lost! – and now found!”.  And people feast just because they know that the father’s exuberant declaration is no exaggeration.

That ultimate death which is spiritual annihilation is anticipated in that everyday death which is biological cessation.  And so when the daughter of Jairus is raised from the dead people eat. Death which is biological cessation is itself anticipated in everyday sickness.  And so when Peter’s mother-in-law is healed of her sickness people eat. In Luke’s writings eating is a festival which celebrates deliverance at the hand of God. We live in order to eat, in order to celebrate, in order to party.  Yes! We live to party.

III: — Despite the theological heavy-going of the last few minutes the mood of that meal which praises God for the gift of the Saviour is not heavy at all.  The mood is one of joy. It’s like an underground stream of water which bubbles or gushes up to the surface from time to time when people are together.  Sometimes this joy erupts in howling merriment.  Jesus is asked why his followers don’t fast in view of the fact that John the Baptist’s followers do fast.         “Tell me”, replies Jesus, “have you ever been to a wedding reception, however cheap, where there was no food at all?         Have you ever been to a wedding reception, however sober, where no jokes were told at all? Well I’m the bridegroom”, Jesus continues, “the party’s mine, and I say we feast and frolic!”

You have heard me say many times that the English translations of the bible tend to flatten out the vividness of the Greek text.  For instance the English translations tell us that Jesus was stirred with compassion when he came upon people who were spiritually leaderless. He was stirred? moved? The Greek text tells us that their predicament knotted his bowels.  In Acts 8 Peter says to a voodoo-specialist, “Your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money!” In the Greek, however, Peter says, “To hell with you and your money!”  The English text of Acts 2 tells us that the early-day Christians “partook of food with glad and generous hearts”.  Glad hearts? The Greek word means to break forth spontaneously in great joy — like the sudden clap of laughter when the punchline of a joke is a humdinger.  I understand why bystanders were puzzled if not shocked at the meals which Jesus shared. Not only was he eating with the wrong people, the mood of the meal wasn’t sombre enough. It was too uninhibited, too happy, to be holy.  “Not so!”, Jesus says, “no one goes to a wedding reception with the face of an undertaker!”

I am still bothered at the mood which has traditionally characterized the Lord’s Supper. It is too introspective,too bent on having us fish around in our spiritual innards until we dredge up something about which we can feel bad.         Some communion hymns are especially morbid, I feel.   “Look on the heart by sorrow broken, look on the tears by sinners shed.” As if the words weren’t lugubrious enough, the tune would depress anyone.  I much prefer the glad and grateful amazement of Charles Wesley’s fine hymn, “And can it be that I should gain an interest in the Saviour’s blood?… My chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth and followed thee”. The only reason I am at the Lord’s Supper at all is that I know I am the beneficiary of an inexhaustible mercy and a glorious promise.  “My chains fell off, my heart was free.  I rose, went forth and followed thee”.   Over and over the book of Deuteronomy insists, “You shall eat before the Lord your God, and you shall rejoice.”

IV: — There is one last item we must look at. Who eats and drinks with Jesus? Who?  Many different people do. Yet they all have one thing in common. They love him and want to be with him. When his heart went out to them theirs went out to him, and still does.  It is not the case that everyone eats with Jesus, simply because not everyone wants to.  Not everyone without exception loves our Lord: but it is true that all kinds and classes without distinction love him.  That is, all classes and kinds and types of people are found rejoicing in his presence among them.

And so we have the woman who poured out on his feet that jar of perfume which cost a year’s wages. In giving up her perfume, however, she gave up more than her bank balance; she gave up her livelihood. You see, people of that era rarely had a bath.  This woman was a streetwalker, and all such women used perfume to hide body odour and keep themselves purchasable.  When she poured out her perfume she rendered herself unemployed.  Does my love for our common Lord approach hers at all?

And then there are the twelve whom Jesus called to train as shepherds.  Shepherds? They were so fickle that they did not even arrange for his funeral!  Yet underneath their fickleness and fear they loved him and ate with him repeatedly.

And then there are what the gospels call “publicans and sinners”.  Publicans were Jews who worked for the Roman department of taxation. They were hated by all self-respecting Jews. “Sinners were the religiously indifferent who sat loose to Jewish custom and couldn’t have cared less. And then there were the poor. All these people had one thing in common:  they knew the blessing, thrill and assurance of a great deliverance. Their hearts were knit to their Lord’s and they wanted only to be with him and serve him.

Their longing to remain with him outweighed their fear of being shunned.  Their longing to remain with him outweighed their nervousness at the sidelong glances of family-members and former friends who wondered what on earth possessed anyone to follow an itinerant preacher, an itinerant preacher who claimed to speak and act with the authority of God, whose own family was embarrassed at him, and whom church authorities alternately feared and despised.

Then who eats and drinks with Jesus? All who have found in him a great deliverance, a wonderful companionship, and a trustworthy way to walk; in a word, those who find his yoke easy and his burden light; those who know their loyalty to him, to be sustained by his faithfulness to them.

Not only do men and women of different classes and kinds and types eat and drink with Jesus before the Gethsemane “crunch”.  After he has been raised from the dead; that is, between his resurrection and ascension, he eats and drinks with those who had fallen down and forsaken him only a short time ago.  He seeks out those who have faltered on the way and have failed him for any reason. He restores them to him and equips them to be trustworthy witnesses to his risen life, witness to his risen life risen in them.

In the Lord’s Supper there is no hocus pocus.  We eat and drink ordinary foods.  Our Lord blesses us with his presence (as he blessed Zacchaeus), suffuses us with his strength, informs us with his purpose. We glow in it all, even if we don’t have words to articulate it.

Remember: because we are creatures who need food in order to survive, we praise God for bread — as we eat in order to live.  And yet because we are creatures who need more than bread we also praise God for him who is the bread of life — and so we live in order to eat, and drink, and feast with our Lord until the day of his glorious appearing when faith gives way to sight,

our journey is over,

and we are at home with him forever.

                                                                                                       F I N I S

Rev. Dr. Victor A. Shepherd

April, 1993

 1 Corinthians 12:14-26 

Part I:

I: — I remember the night Joe Theismann, quarterback for the Washington Redskins, broke his leg. It was just another play in a football game, with several opponents breaking through the Washington line and tackling the quarterback. As the players unpiled themselves, one of them waved urgently at the Washington bench, calling for the team-physician. The T.V. camera zoomed in on the stricken player. He was lying on his back with one leg extended normally in front of him. The other leg was extended normally from hip to knee; below the knee, however, between knee and ankle, this leg jutted out at a 45 degree angle. The referee walked over to Theismann, raised the broken limb slightly, and moved it parallel to the uninjured leg.

Three things stood out in this incident. One, the injured player was in much pain. Two, his broken, displaced leg was unsightly. Unsightly? It was ghastly! Three, the broken leg was nonfunctional; Theismann couldn’t use it for anything. There was only one thing to do: get the broken leg set as soon as possible. Once the leg was set, pain would be reduced, the ghastly spectacle would disappear, and usefulness would be restored.

It’s always important that broken limbs be set. The word in secular Greek for bone-setting is katartismos. Paul uses this word in Ephesians 4:12 when he tells the congregation in Ephesus that the saints have to be equipped “for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.” The gifts that Jesus Christ distributes among his people within a congregation are gifts meant to set the broken limbs of any and all Christians within the congregation in order that the congregation can then exercise its ministry. Broken limbs that aren’t set remain painful to the bearer, unsightly to everyone else, and useless for the congregation’s ministry. The congregation is to be “equipped” for ministry in the name of Jesus Christ. Katartismos, equipped.

When Paul uses the word in Ephesians 4:12 he draws on yet another meaning in secular Greek. Katartismos also means to mend, not a broken bone this time, but a fishing net. An unmended net won’t catch fish; a mended net will. Didn’t Jesus appoint his people to be fishers of fellow-humans? Plainly, the church of Jesus Christ is going to catch fish only if its nets are in good repair.

When Christ’s people are “equipped” through the gifts of their fellow-Christians, two things happen. The congregation has its own broken limbs set so that pain is reduced, unsightliness disappears, and usefulness is restored. In the second place, the congregation’s work beyond itself is assisted, for nets mended means that others will be “caught”; that is, they will be brought into the fellowship of Jesus Christ as they are brought into fellowship with Jesus Christ.

Then regardless of whatever gifts or talents or abilities we have, we need to offer them to our Lord himself by means of offering them to the congregation. As we offer our gifts to the congregation, our gifts will “equip the saints”: set the broken limbs within and mend the fishing nets without, with the result that the congregation honours its appointment to be fishers of others and see them added to the body of Christ.

II: — “It all sounds fine”, someone objects, “but I don’t happen to have any gifts; I don’t have anything that is significant to anyone, anywhere, for any purpose. I’m simply not talented.” The modesty is unquestionably sincere; unquestionably it is also without foundation. There is no one without a gift; in fact, there is no one without several gifts, many gifts. To be sure, when we speak of someone as “gifted” in the context of church life we commonly mean two sorts of gift only: speaking and music-making. Victor speaks, Maureen makes music, the Shepherds are gifted. Then others aren’t gifted, or are less gifted?

We must be sure we understand what is meant by “gift.” A gift or talent or ability is anything we do. I say “anything we do” rather than “anything we can do” simply because people most often think they can’t do very much. Whatever it is that they are doing right now, however, they plainly can do or they wouldn’t be doing it! I’ve noticed that the people who tell me they aren’t gifted nevertheless do something throughout the day; most are gainfully employed, while others work in the home or do volunteer work. Whatever we do is obviously gift. Since everyone does something, no one is ungifted. The people who claim they lack gifts tell me this as they continue preparing the evening meal, or they tell me this as they take a break from painting their house or mowing the lawn. Right in the midst of doing something, and doing it well, they expect me to believe they can’t do anything! They don’t intend to be ridiculous, but something’s wrong with the picture nonetheless.

Not only are all of us gifted at something, all of us are gifted at a great many things. When the Shepherd family visited the Iona Community in the Hebridean Islands of Scotland, we were assigned daily tasks for our sojourn, as were other visitors to the community. Needless to say fulltime resident-members of the community already knew what their tasks were and performed them diligently. One fellow I chatted with was a lawyer. Unquestionably lawyering was a gift he possessed. But was it his one and only gift? Was free legal assistance the only service he could render the community? During the seven days that I lived at Iona I noticed that this fellow cleaned the toilets every day. (Remember: everyone has many different gifts inasmuch as everyone can do many different things.) Now we must be sure to understand that toilet-cleaning is important. It’s important because the work of the Iona Community — its worship, witness, evangelism, social outreach, hospitality to international travellers — this work is most important, and this most important work will stall if the toilets aren’t kept clean. The only consideration here is whether or not toilets need to be cleaned every day and whether or not someone who is able to clean them is available. Whether or not a lawyer should be cleaning them isn’t a consideration. Jesus washed feet, didn’t he? (No doubt you are itching to find out what my short-term assignment was. It wasn’t to preach or teach or lecture; it was to clean the fireplace in the common room each morning.)

There are as many ministries for us to exercise, both individually and collectively, as there are things that we can do. The gifts we have — all of them — are services we can render.

III: — Then does the mere fact of a gift or talent or ability qualify the bearer for a ministry? Certainly not. Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler and Sir John A. MacDonald were gifted public speakers. Does this mean they should have been allowed into pulpits? Certainly not. Alan Eagleson has a talent for eliciting the trust of all sorts of people. Does this mean he should become our pastoral visitor? (I cannot forbear mentioning that Alan Eagleson has spoken (i.e., “preached”) from the pulpit of Kingsway Lambton United Church. Why was he invited to do so? Is it thought that Jesus Christ wins disciples [whom he appoints to crossbearing] by means of the world’s “glitz”?)

If more than gift or talent or ability is needed, precisely what is needed? Faith in our Lord Jesus Christ is needed; so is love for his people, even love for those not yet his people. Without faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, people can do eversomuch but it won’t be a doing consecrated to the purposes and truth of the kingdom of God. Without faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, people can do eversomuch, but it won’t be done in the confidence that he will own it and honour it and use it. Without love for his people (as well as love for those not yet his people), the motive for doing whatever is done may be the motive of self-congratulation or public recognition or personal superiority born of envy; but in any case it won’t be the motive of love for Christ’s people, the motive of equipping the saints for their ministry, the motive of building up the body of Christ.

It is faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, together with love for those whom he claims for himself, that renders any gift or talent or ability that ministry which serves him by serving his people.

When Joe Theismann broke his leg so very badly he himself was in much pain; everyone who saw him found the spectacle off-putting; and his dysfunctional leg really diminished the team’s effectiveness. Everyone was glad his leg was set as soon as possible.

Katartismos — equipping Christ’s people for ministry; that is, setting broken limbs, as well as mending fishing nets.

Victor Shepherd
January 1998                

Gifts, Ministries and the Growth of Faith

Part II: David Clarkson

Dr. Albert Schweitzer, addressing a graduating class of an English public school decades ago said: “Young people, I do not know what lies ahead for you, but this I do know: you will not truly be happy until you have learned to serve.” This morning’s sermon is in many ways about service and specifically about service to one another in our congregation here, as we exercise our collective ministry as a congregation.

There are many examples of the Lord at work in this congregation. There is much to celebrate. We gather and worship. There is support for mission locally and word wide. There is Bible study, Sunday School and special presentations, all in the context of Christian education. There are Christmas baskets and there are volunteer window sash painters. There is youth work and there is book publishing. There is a strident defense of Christian doctrine and there is quiet nurturing. There is sacred music, and there is practical financial management. There is weekly confirmation that we are fallen sinners and there is a weekly holding up of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And yet, I think it is important to speak this morning about service, and I have two themes to develop. I shall call them the lesser and the larger. I shall call them the merely important and the utterly crucial.

First, the lesser theme, the one I call the merely important. Each of us here has spiritual gifts to offer congregational life and its ministry. Each has some obligation to the congregation to share such gifts. I do not speak here of misery in such obligations. We are told that our yoke is easy, our burden is light – that is, if we are working in God’s service. John Milton is quoted as saying, “They too, serve, who also stand and wait.”

I don’t think this is true in congregational life. In church work there is an immediacy, a need to get on with the work of the Kingdom. We are not to consider options forever. We are to act.

A brief summary of church government for those not yet immersed: The Official Board and its committees administer the work of this congregation. We support our clergy, we try to put some order into the chaos so that Christian life can occur within this congregation. The Official Board does its work through committees. These committees are responsible for finance and proper accounting of our money, for property and maintaining a place to worship and celebrate church life, for outreach and mission, for Christian education including the Sunday School, for worship organization including music, for pastoral care and organizing our support of each other.

There is added immediacy at this time because four of the Board’s committees have an outgoing Chair – and with no successor in place. All committees but one are critically understaffed. And yet, just supplying names and writing them on a piece of paper called an organizational diagram isn’t adequate either. We may be at a point where much of our church work has to be done differently, re-engineered as they say. I grew up in a congregation of farmers, small businessmen, mothers who did not work outside of the home, and some others who always seemed to me to be a little strange. Some things have changed . . . . The gifts of those people are often different than those gifts we have here this morning – a farmer with a snow plow who, unasked, just sent it off to the church parking lot on winter Saturday afternoons to clear the snow. But gifts unknown then are common place today – keyboard and computer skills, nursing skills, teaching skills, music talent – and especially, compared to those congregations of yesteryear in rural Ontario we have much more cold, hard cash.

And yet last Spring we were wrestling with a financial problem. We were not making our budget, and an embarrassingly modest budget at that. How could this contradiction be? We have learned about a God who wants to have a profound relationship, a profound relationship with us, but also the God who rules the cosmos, a power beyond our comprehension, who created us for no other purpose than to have a profound relationship with himself! We know this. Victor has said so a thousand times from this pulpit. We’ve prayed it. We’ve sung it. And yet, we had (and have) a financial problem. And at the same time, in this congregation, on average, we know that a household gives less on Sunday morning than it would have spent the Saturday evening before at the Swiss Chalet and the movies. How does one figure this?

In an attempt to answer this question, let me move on to my second theme, the one that I call the larger, the utterly crucial, about becoming involved in church work, about sharing our spiritual gifts amongst ourselves as a congregation.

I think we need to share our gifts in service. I think we need to do so for our own salvation. Some may think that’s a bit of a stretch. How would one suffer through dull meeting after dull meeting to achieve salvation and what’s the link, and if I really have to do this, is salvation worth it? But here’s the link: We have heard Victor, also a thousand times form this pulpit, patiently explain how Paul states we can’t get our relationship with God right by ourselves. Right relatedness to God is God’s gift to us. We call it grace. We’ve heard nothing else more frequently in this church for the last two decades.

But remember the paradox: the free gift of grace does not imply we sit by and wait for the transfusion. Paul is ready with one of his agricultural examples – he speaks of sowing seeds in the spirit and harvesting eternal life. Seeds, which a farmer or gardener sow, germinate and mature in relation to the forces of nature, which God created. But the farmer must still work. The land must be tilled, the weeds must be kept at bay, watering must be done, young plants must be nurtured. That is, according to Paul, we are to put ourselves in the place where we can be blessed with grace.

There is much about church work that doesn’t at first appear to be pleasing to God, or that doesn’t appear to put us in the posture to receive grace. But the disciplines we more commonly think of as serving that purpose – prayer, worship, fasting, study, submission, confession – these are activities also, that sometimes when they are practiced by us, God may not find particularly pleasing. We are presumptuous if we presume to tell God which postures will nurture grace and which will not. The hymn tune “trust and obey to be happy in Jesus” is relevant. If we haven’t yet participated through service in the life of this congregation, we may not yet be too far down the road in the more contemplative spiritual disciplines either.

In music, it is often very difficult to get a child to practice the piano. And do you wonder? It sounds terrible. And it is hard to refute the child’s position that attempting to play the piano gives no pleasure. But Pablo Casals, master cellist, even as a very old man, said how he just needed to ‘scratch away’ at his cello every morning to feel right with the day.

Christian service begets the desire to do more. Christian service can be like a learning curve. Contribution of your gifts can get you on that curve. Or perhaps a learning curve isn’t the right example. For some it is more like a staircase. Periods of growth and amazing insights can be followed by a plateau before the next jump forward. Be it a learning curve or a stair case, I think it’s important to get on it.

At this point I was searching for just the right word to describe how, having once felt God’s pleasure, one wants to all the more feel such again and again. It is the sort of thing that, the more of it, the more we want. Consider the concept of addiction. As we meet the word addiction in our society, we think of stealing to achieve it, hurting others to satisfy the addiction, and climbing over others in our greed. But in striving to satisfy our addiction to achieve God’s pleasure, all of the opposite is exactly true. I can think of no other example where such a stark opposite exists. There is much wonderful mystery here.

And so back to the financial crisis last spring. We correctly diagnosed that we had less a financial crisis and more a spiritual crisis, a problem of the spiritual temperature among us. I suggest that financial commitment flows from commitment of our gifts to one another as we worship and serve as a congregation.

To the extent that I had two themes, I have two conclusions. First, let me conclude the theme that I have called the lesser, the merely very important. We need help, we need big time help, in the administration of our congregation. There is no limit to the number of gifts that are available to work for the coming of the Kingdom here on earth and every Sunday we pray just that, “Thy Kingdom come”. Here is an example of one that is about to open up. It is one of the biggest unpaid jobs in the church. It is the job of the rental coordinator. Our budget receives $25,000 per year from rentals. To achieve this without chaos, some person from this congregation must organize and schedule, negotiate leases, keep track of keys, keep track of accounts payable, protect the essential requirements which the congregation requires for worship and congregational life, allocate space, have back up plans, assess clean up needs, monitor the load on the wear and tear of our facilities. I suppose this job could be divided up, but think of it for now as a single job. Quite in addition to the way in which service makes it possible to become right with God, the doing of this job makes it possible for the church budget to receive an annual cash infusion larger that the five highest envelopes givers all added together!

I have a disclaimer as I finish the first part of my conclusion: that the existing leadership will match people and gifts to appropriate service, and we may not always get a perfect fit. Sometimes feelings will be hurt. This is because our church work and methods are changing. There are absent talents that we used to rely on. There are talents available that we haven’t yet learned how to use and haven’t used well in the past. However, as we read in scripture, we find that the disciples were getting it wrong all the time. So the existing church leadership will try to do as well as the disciples!

But that is not quite the end. I still have the larger theme to conclude, the theme I call absolutely crucial. If I end here, I’ve done little more than make it more difficult for you to offer excuses to avoid service and to make a coherent argument because I’ve had years of church committee work in order to refine my pitch, and besides, it’s just not done to argue back during the sermon. Instead I’ll conclude with a paragraph from Richard Foster’s book, The Celebration of Discipline. This paragraph is why we do church work. Do you need a vision? Here it is. This is why we offer our services to one another because we are trying to achieve something. Richard Foster writes:

“The aim of God in history is the creation of an all-inclusive community of loving persons, with Himself included in that community as its prime sustainer and most glorious inhabitant. Such a community lives under the immediate and total rulership of the Holy Spirit. They are a people blinded to all other loyalties by the splendor of God, a compassionate community embodying the law of love as seen in Jesus Christ. They are an obedient army of the Lamb of God living under the Spiritual Disciplines, a community in the process of total transformation from the inside out, a people determined to live out the demands of the gospel in a secular world. They are tenderly aggressive, meekly powerful, suffering, and overcoming. Such a community, cast in a rare and apostolic mold, constitutes a new gathering of the people of God. May almighty God continue to gather such people in our day.”

 

                                                                      Victor Shepherd

January 11, 1998

1 Corinthians 15:20   Psalm 24:1    Exodus 23:16    Romans 8:23

I: — Megalomania is a psychiatric illness wherein the ill person has ridiculously inflated views of himself, regards himself absurdly self-important, thinks himself to be the centre of the universe, assumes that everyone else exists to serve him. Isn’t it good that we aren’t like that?

The truth is “we” are; “we”, that is, in the sense of collective humankind. The environmental crisis — critical in the sense that we can render our environment lethal — the environmental crisis demonstrates that a kind of collective megalomania has possessed us for longer than we think. Collectively humankind has assumed that the earth is ours to do with as we please; after all, the earth is “ours”, isn’t it? (It doesn’t belong to martians or moon-dwellers!) Then it is ours! In fact to speak of the earth as ours, to have precipitated the environmental crisis, is to give evidence that humankind, collectively, has a ridiculously inflated view of itself; we regard ourselves as self-important, the centre of the universe; we feel that everything exists to serve us. We are collectively self-deluded.

The ancient psalmist knew better. “The earth is the Lord’s”, he wrote, “the earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof; the world and those who dwell therein. (The earth is the Lord’s; the earth’s fulness is the Lord’s; everyone who lives on the earth and is sustained by the earth is the Lord’s.) We are his; we don’t even belong to ourselves. It is both childish and silly for me to say, “I’m my own man”; even worse to say, “I’m a self-made man”. The earth is the Lord’s, everything in it and everyone upon it: all his.

Our Hebrew foreparents always knew this. One of their oldest festivals was the Festival of the Harvest. “You shall keep the feast of the harvest” (this is the command of God) “you shall keep the feast of ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in from the field the fruit of your labour.” The Festival of the Harvest was a sharp reminder that the earth is the Lord’s, and this earth brings forth the food we need by his goodness and his providence. Obviously, our Hebrew foreparents were startlingly aware of several matters which we have managed to forget:

ONE: Because God is creator, because God has fashioned the universe out of nothing, it is his alone. Everything in it is his, whether mineral, vegetable, animal or human. Not only is it not ours to do with as we please, it isn’t ours at all.

TWO: Because everything belongs to God, our assumption that we have a right to it amounts to presumption. Our presumptuousness is a violation of God’s right, and God regards us as impertinent.

THREE: Because God, in his goodness, has created all things for our blessing, of his kindness he allows us access to his creation, even appoints us stewards of it.

FOUR: Because God is generous, his creation brings forth fruit abundantly, superabundantly. The first fruits which we offer to him are his pledge of more to come; in fact, they are the first instalment of the “more” that is already on the way.

FIVE: In recognition of God’s sovereign creativity, and out of gratitude to him for his blessing, we offer to him the “first fruits” of the harvest, in the language of our Hebrew foreparents; we offer the first fruits to God. Our offering of it is a sign of our offering ourselves to him in gratitude and reverence.

Some people tell us that if God is the author of blessing, particularly the author of the blessing of foodstuffs, then God has distributed his blessing very inconsistently, even unfairly. Just look at the pictures of children with bow legs, deformed ribs and misshapen skulls. These children have rickets, a vitamin-deficiency disease. We have seen the grossly distended tummies of children who are malnourished. Less evident at first glance is the brain damage of malnourished children, damage sustained in childhood which cannot be overcome in adulthood; these people are intellectually impaired for life.

Some people tell us that God is a sadist in view of the fact that hungry people (starving people, in fact) are not only hungry but tormented through knowing of the sumptuous foodstuffs which we non-hungry people have in abundance. But let us not blame God for this state of affairs. Remember, the earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof. The “fulness thereof” is full enough. At this moment there is enough food grown throughout the world to give everyone — without exception — 3,000 calories per day. (Most people need only 2,300.) In addition there are vast tracts of land that could produce food which are not under cultivation. We see the emaciated victims of hunger in India, and hope that a few dozen people of the millions there will get to Mother Teresa for a little tender loving care in their last hours. India, however, has the same number of people per cultivated acre as France, and France is the breadbasket of the European Common Market. With no more than existing agricultural techniques the land under cultivation at this moment in India could feed the entire world. Without strain the arable land of Black Africa could feed ten billion people, twice the world’s present population. Land already under cultivation in the world can support thirty-five billion people on an American diet, or 105 billion people on a Japanese diet, assuming no improvement in food-producing technology. Zaire has the lowest protein intake per person in the world; but Zaire has so few people per cultivated acre that its people could be drowning in food. The masses of Brazil are wretchedly underfed, yet Brazil has more land under cultivation per person than the USA. In South America the poorest people struggle to grow food on 45 degree slopes of rocky soil, while the wealthiest, owning the best soil, grow carnations for export as dining-room table decorations.

“But there have always been famines”, someone replies, “and God is responsible for the weather. Greedy, exploitative, heartless tycoons can’t be blamed for those aberrations in the weather which produce famines.” My comment here will be brief. India is one of the most famine-afflicted countries in the world. In 1870 the Suez Canal was built. Immediately India became a major exporter of wheat to England — while India’s people starved. (Their starvation had nothing to do with famine.) In the worst years of famine India has exported record quantities of grain. Plainly God has remained generous. The Festival of the Harvest should not be set aside, for God deserves to be thanked and honoured.

It’s clear that the fault does not lie with that earth which is the Lord’s; the fault lies, rather, with “those who dwell therein”; the fault lies with us. Humankind, collectively, is deadly. We are deadly. We deaden our fellow human-beings. What is the problem?

II: — We have a clue — more than a clue — when we look once more at the expression, “first fruits”; this time from the pen of St.Paul. “Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.” The problem, of course, is the Fall of humankind. There isn’t time today to explore thoroughly the biblical understanding of the Fall and all its consequences. In the time we have I can say only this much: in the wake of the Fall death is the ruling power of the world. Death is a power which infiltrates all things, undoes all things, brings all things to nought. God created all that is out of nothing; death reduces all that is to nothing. Death deadens. And in a fallen world, death dominates.

The acid rain which kills lakes is an instance of death’s domain. The economic crisis in North America is another instance. We must never forget that the economic “gravy train” which we have always enjoyed in North America has depended, historically, on the availability of cheap labour and cheap land. There was no cheaper labour than slavery — and what is slavery but a living death? There was no cheaper land than land taken at the point of a gun — and what is genocide but largescale death?

The racism which bedevils a fallen world is another instance of death’s domain. Racism says to someone, “You don’t exist humanly. You may exist bodily, in a sub-standard, sub-human way, but you don’t exist humanly.”

Death as dominant power can be profitable, as the tobacco companies demonstrate. As more and more people quit smoking the tobacco companies redouble their efforts to get teenagers to start. Adults who smoke invariably started in their teens. (Nobody starts to smoke at age 48.) As the North American market declines the tobacco companies intensify their efforts to have the poorest people in underdeveloped countries become habituated. Death is marketable.

With the example of tobacco-marketing in mind — that is, the engineering of death — it is easy to understand how death is engineered through food-marketing when there is food enough for everyone. Remember: according to scripture death is the ruling power of a fallen world.

WITH ONE GLORIOUS EXCEPTION! Jesus Christ has been raised victor over death. To behold him raised is to know that in him death has been bested. Because Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead, death has no dominion over him, and no dominion over his people. To be sure, death has not disappeared; it remains potent; but it is not omnipotent. Death is a defeated power which doesn’t have sense enough to give up, quit. It continues to lash out in its final, futile frenzy.

St.Paul reminds us that our Lord’s resurrection is a kind of first fruits. The first fruits are always a pledge of more to come, in fact the first instalment of something massive and grand. The “massive and grand” is the kingdom of God. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the guarantee of God’s kingdom. And God’s kingdom is God’s creation healed.

Because God’s kingdom, God’s creation healed, is guaranteed Christ’s people are free to spend themselves in kingdom-work. Because we now see through that optic heart which Christ himself has healed in us, we are free to spend ourselves on those whom the world ignores or disdains as losers, not worth our time and effort because unable to advance us or enhance us. Chronically mentally ill people do not appear likely to advance my career or enhance me personally, at least enhance me in any sense that the world would recognize. Then why do I bother with them and why are they so dear to me? Because I see them through that optic heart which Jesus Christ has restored in me. I see them as only a hair’s breadth away from that glorious restoration to which they have been appointed in God’s kingdom. You recall the gospel-story of the deranged fellow who ran around in the Gadarene hills, naked, cutting himself with stones, saying over and over, “My name is legion, there are so many of us.” At the touch of our Lord he appeared before the townspeople seated, clothed, and in his right mind. In God’s kingdom that is the future of all who are like him now.

We who are Christ’s people are free to spend ourselves for any and all who appear hopeless, just because there is no hopelessness in that kingdom which is even now pressing itself upon us.

The disadvantaged child whom the conscientious schoolteacher sees for nine months and then will never see again; whatever kingdom-love and kingdom-truth she envelops the child in will not to be lost eternally, and therefore her time and energy and even anguish are never wasted. The homemaker who feels so helpless before the beaten neighbour-woman who wants advice yet doesn’t follow it inasmuch as she can’t seem to leave the husband who beats her; the homemaker who wonders whether her patient listening has point and weight and substance need wonder no longer. As a pastor I have often attended death-beds where the person I have gone to see is unconscious and breathing only four times per minute. But I don’t say to myself, “He is comatose and my presence is pointless; I have come in vain and might as well go home right away.” On the contrary, he should still be surrounded in the comfort of the One who is resurrection and life. Besides, the patient in the adjacent bed notices whether I care about the apparently hopeless; so do hospital visitors; so do the nurses.

Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead. His resurrection means that he is the rightful ruler of the cosmos; to be sure death has butted in and attempted to extend its domain. It is still a power to be reckoned with, but not a power to be feared. It is a power to be resisted, but not a power to stand in awe of, for it is defeated now and will disappear shortly. In the defeat of death the kingdom of God has come to the fore. The risen one is the first fruits of it. He is its guarantee. He is the leading edge of it. And his people are free to spend themselves in kingdom-pursuits which others may find ridiculous or silly; but we, Christ’s people, see through a restored optic heart. For us this kingdom is so substantial, so concrete, that it fills the horizon of our lives.

III: — And yet however strongly we believe this in our heads, it’s easy to get discouraged, isn’t it. I believe,with no shadow of doubt whatsoever, all that I have said about our Lord’s resurrection and the defeat of death and the coming kingdom of God and our living in anticipation of it. I believe it all in my head. Yet there are days when my step is slow and my heart is heavy and my zeal wanes. On those days I look again to another instance of “first fruits” and find myself refreshed and supplied with new vigour. In his letter to the Christians in Rome Paul says, “The entire creation is groaning; and we who have the first fruits of the Spirit, we are groaning too as we wait for the redemption of our bodies.”

It is plain the creation is groaning; the environmental crisis is its groan, at least one of its groans. You and I groan too, for we are frustrated that we have been disciples for so long yet appear so immature; we use proper Christian vocabulary about faith and hope and love, yet our faith seems fragile and our hope diminished and our love undermined by our residual nastiness. Is it all ever going to get better? Are we ever going to get the monkey off our back? Will the day ever come when a spectator sees the imprint of Christ upon me without having to be told that I am a Christian? Yes! The day is coming when I shall stand forth as that new creature in Christ whose newness is apparent instead of merely professed. One day I was wearing a necktie with the outline of several fish on it. A woman asked me why I was wearing a tie with fish-silhouettes on it. Now I was not having a good day on this occasion (in fact I was having a terrible day) and somewhat morosely I told her that my necktie was the only thing about me that was identifiably Christian. I trust I was exaggerating. Still, I know there are days when you feel like that too.

But we aren’t like this all the time. The apostle tells us that we, Christ’s people, are possessed of the Spirit, and the Spirit is the first fruits, the guarantee, of something bigger and grander.

For early-day Christians the Spirit — the pulsating, intimate presence of God himself, that surge of God within our own hearts — for early-day Christians the Spirit was that which rendered them Christian. If you had asked those people where they differed from their non-Christian neighbours and friends they would not have said, “Oh, we believe certain things which they don’t believe.” They would have said, “We have come to know a new relationship as our lives are taken up into God’s own life; deep down inside us our heart throbs with our new-found life in God. Before “God” was only a word, and a word we didn’t use very often. Now God is a presence we could no more deny than deny our breathing.” God intimate, God present, God indwelling is the Spirit. And it is our present awareness of the Spirit which is the first fruits of our completed deliverance when the residues of our sinnership are finally shed and we stand forth as men and women whose appearance no longer contradicts our profession of Christ.

This is what invigorates me on those days when my foot is heavy and my reputation is tarnished. My awareness of the Spirit within me is a pledge, even the first installment, of my final deliverance when I shall stand before God without spot or blemish.

Today is Thanksgiving Sunday. My gratitude was never greater than it is today. I want only to thank God for the first fruits which he has given us. Food in such abundance that his generosity cannot be doubted; the resurrection of his son from the dead in such power that death has been bested and the kingdom of God guaranteed; the Spirit within us in such assurance that discouragement over the slowness of our Christian growth can be put behind us. I trust that your heart swells with the same gratitude as mine.

F I N I S

                                                                        Victor A. Shepherd                                                                                       

  October 1992

THANKSGIVING SUNDAY, 1992

1^st Corinthians 15:12-20

In the course of my holocaust studies I frequently come upon accounts of heartbreaking delusion. I read, for instance, of Jewish people in the 1940s who hear of something dreadful said to be on the point of befalling their people.  They look at each other in horror — but only for a few seconds — and then console themselves, “But of course it isn’t going to happen; it couldn’t happen here; we live in a civilized nation; this is the land of Beethoven and Schubert and Goethe and Heine and Schiller; this is the country whose appropriation of the Enlightenment gave Jewish people recognition and opportunities unparalleled anywhere else in Europe. What we’re told is about to happen could never happen here.”  But it did happen, and when it happened the delusion was exposed as lethal – albeit exposed too late.

Our hearts go out to anyone we find living in a delusion.

The newscast tells us of yet another elderly person who opened her door to a man in a fine business suit, and who told her he was a bank official bent on uncovering a fraudulent bank employee.  In order to help the bank in this important task would she kindly cooperate and temporarily withdraw her savings as well as her late husband’s life insurance benefits.   We all know the rest of the story: another trusting eighty year old who has been swindled out of all her material resources.

Perhaps the most extreme form of living in a delusion — and therefore the one to which our hearts go out the most — is the delusion of the mentally deranged person. He tells us he is Napoleon fighting in the American Revolution, pursued alternately by the RCMP and Admiral Nelson.   The psychotic person’s delusion appears to extend everywhere and comprehend everything. He appears most to be pitied.

What did I say? Extend everywhere and comprehend everything, most to be pitied.   The apostle Paul insists that if Jesus Christ has not been raised from the dead then those who believe in him are deluded, overtaken by hallucination. Since those who believe in him believe that he is the one through whom and for whom everything has been made, that he is sovereign over the entire cosmos, then the delusion in which such believers are sunk is no little delusion. This delusion extends everywhere and comprehends everything.   “If Christ be not raised from the dead”, says Paul, “we believers are of all people most to be pitied, for we are in the grip of a hallucination that’s total.”

I: — “If Christ be not raised”, the apostle begins, “then our preaching is in vain.” Of course it’s in vain. Preaching is always a matter of pointing to Jesus Christ as the living one who not only lives now but whom death will never be able to overtake again.   What could be more futile, vain, than commending as living, living eternally, someone who is at this moment deader than a dinosaur?   This is not to say that such a preacher herself is fraudulent or hypocritical; merely to say that such a preacher is deluded.   And because she is deluded with respect to the truth about Jesus, what she urges upon others is unsubstantial, groundless, ineffective; in short, utterly unreal.

Preaching is never merely a matter of setting forth a cluster of ideas or notions on a religious topic. Preaching the gospel to the yet-ungospelized is not the same as commending capitalism to communists, or commending the Prime Minister’s platform to those who support someone else’s, or commending the monarchy to republicans, or commending sobriety to the substance-habituated. In every situation just mentioned someone is placing one set of ideas alongside another set, at the same time assuming that the other party will see the inherent superiority of the contrasting set of ideas.   The western capitalist assumes that the notion of capitalism is transparently better than the notion of communism.   The Chinese communist, needless to say, assumes the exact opposite.

Preaching isn’t this; preaching isn’t articulating notions whose inherent superiority is self-evident.         Preaching, rather, is testifying to the living person of Jesus Christ as he is clothed with his truth.   In the course of this testimony the living one himself emerges from the sincere but garbled utterance of the preacher and stands forth as living person to be seized and trusted and loved and obeyed.  Preaching is a matter of uttering many words about Jesus when, in the midst of these many words, the Word himself steps forth in such a way that hearers are no longer assessing words; hearers are confronted with that Person whom they cannot evade and concerning whom they must now decide. But of course the one spoken about can loom up out of the many words about him and stand forth as the world’s sole redeemer and sovereign and hope only if he is alive. Unless Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead and is now alive, preaching is nothing more than an exercise in comparing idea with idea, notion with notion, even bias with bias.

When next you hear a sermon ask yourself this question: does the preacher exude confidence in the promise of the risen Lord, confidence that he will startle hearers as witness is borne to him?  Or does the preacher exude no such confidence, with the result that the sermon has to resort to shrillness, exaggeration, or manipulation? Preaching that resorts to such devices is already in vain, since these gimmicks attest the absence of any conviction that Jesus Christ is alive.

On the other hand, preaching that rests its confidence in the promise of the living one to manifest himself; rests its confidence in the one spoken about to speak for himself; rests its confidence that he who is pointed to as if he were far off in truth is here to meet us now; preaching that exudes the preacher’s experience of Christ; namely, that he can unstop deaf ears and open blind eyes and thaw frozen hearts — such preaching is never in vain just because the risen one himself will always honour it and use it to confirm himself alive as he puts another new-born on the road of lifelong discipleship.

II: — “If Christ be not raised from the dead”, the apostle continues, “then your faith is in vain.” Of course it’s in vain. Faith is our glad, grateful, adoring embracing of the one who has first embraced us. But the dead don’t embrace. Then if Jesus hasn’t been raised what we thought to be our faith (we thought we were embracing him) is the ghastliest delusion.  Little wonder the apostle says we would then be the most pathetic, pitiable creatures on earth.

Think of it this way. Faith is always faith in Jesus Christ, the Incarnate One, the Son of God.  On Good Friday it appeared that his Father had abandoned him to contempt and cruelty. What if Easter hadn’t occurred? What if the Father had abandoned his Son forever to contempt and cruelty? Faith in such a God would be ludicrous, and if ludicrous then surely in vain, for such faith (so-called) would be nothing more than the desperation of naïve people in the face of a snickering deity.

Or think of it this way. Faith in Jesus is faith that he is the one in whom God routs the tyranny of evil and renders the strongholds of Satan the kingdom of God . Faith in Jesus is faith that the mighty deeds of his earthly ministry were signs and instalments of that kingdom where only God’s will is done.  But if Jesus isn’t raised from the dead then his mighty deeds, so far from being signs and instalments of the kingdom, were nothing more than transient, sideshow amusements.

What about his teachings? His teachings, he insisted, are the manufacturer’s manual to that kingdom which cannot be shaken. Are they? Or are they merely the exaggerated expostulations of an extremist?   Let’s be honest: of themselves, our Lord’s teachings do resemble the exaggerated ranting of an extremist.  Just listen to him. “Either you love God — profoundly love God — or you are more surely addicted to money than a junkie is to cocaine.”   On the face of it this assertion is ridiculous.  Why did he juxtapose God and mammon, God and money in this way?   Why did he assume that God and money are the rival powers, jointly exhaustive, in the entire universe?   His assertion is categorical, without qualification.  He offers no argument, no explanation, just a bald, bold assertion. “Do you lust after someone to whom you aren’t married?  Then you are an adulterer, just like those promiscuous types you despise in your heart and warn your children against.”  “Either you forgive from your heart the person who has violated you or you have invoked the death sentence upon yourself, for either you pardon the person whose treatment of you is inexcusable or you forfeit God’s pardon of you.” “You won’t give up anything that inhibits your spiritual growth?  Then you aren’t fit for the kingdom of God and you might as well depart for the outer darkness right now.”  Our Lord’s teaching sounds so very extreme.  It is extreme. Then is it wildly exaggerated and for that reason false?  If he hasn’t been raised from the dead then his teachings can be dismissed as the raving of a zealot we do well to forget.  If, on the other hand, he has been raised and now lives eternally, then we should pause and ponder his teachings, for they are the manufacturer’s manual to that kingdom which cannot be shaken.

III: — “If Christ be not raised…you are still in your sins”, the apostle continues.  Of course we are. We are still in our sins in two senses.  In the first place, if Christ be not raised then his Father’s ratification of his death as the effectual sacrifice for sin hasn’t occurred. The death of Jesus is then no different from the deaths of the two terrorists who died alongside him. Concerning the deaths of these two terrorists Charles Wesley never wrote, “God and sinners reconciled.” Concerning their deaths another hymnwriter didn’t write, “In the cross of terrorists I glory, towering o’er the wrecks of time.”  When John the Baptist was executed his friends lamented that a good man had been bushwhacked; his friends never exulted that the sin of the world had been dealt with definitively.

The resurrection of Jesus, on the other hand, is the Father’s declaration that this execution is unique in all the world; this execution isn’t defeat but victory.  This execution isn’t finally martyrdom but amnesty.  This execution isn’t finally ultimately to be lamented but celebrated. Because Christ has been raised from the dead we know what his death means.  Because Christ has been raised the Father has declared to the world that the Son’s sacrifice is sealed, accepted, honoured, made effective for all men and all women everywhere.

There is a second sense in which the Corinthian Christians, to whom Paul wrote these words, would still be in their sins if Christ had not been raised.  If Christ had not been raised then Christ could not seize the people in Corinth and claim them for obedience and righteousness.  Had they not been seized, claimed for obedience and righteousness, they would still be stumbling in disobedience and wallowing in unrighteousness.

Make no mistake. The reputation of the people of Corinth was known the world over. It resembled the reputation of present-day Thailand . Everyone knows what the major tourist attraction is in Thailand . Everyone knows that the business of venereality is so lucrative in Thailand that the government there won’t do anything about it, won’t even protect the twelve and thirteen year olds who are exploited by it.  The ancient world had a word for all this, a verb: “Corinthianize”.  In the ancient world if you wanted to speak of every kind of degenerate human sexual activity from the shamelessly immoral (but not perverse) all the way to the unmentionably perverse, you needed only one word: “Corinthianize”. If Christ had not been raised from the dead, he wouldn’t have — couldn’t have — seized and startled and claimed those who came to faith in him and were added to the congregation in that city.  Those people would still have been doing what they had been doing before the risen one had arrested them.  In this sense they would still be in the midst of their profligate sins.

You and I are less dramatic sinners than the people of Corinth . To say we are less dramatic sinners, however, is not to say we are any less sinners. Yet because Christ has been raised from the dead we too are no longer in our sins; no longer in our sins in the sense that we are now endeavouring to repudiate sin as quickly as we recognize it, endeavouring to put it behind us, never so much as to entertain it or flirt with it.  We want only to triumph over it and praise God for the victory, like any authentic disciple.

IV: — “If Christ be not raised”, the apostle says in conclusion, “then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.”   Of course they have perished.  Only the deluded would think anything else.  Christians have always known that death is death.   Romantics may disguise death romantically and pretend any number of silly things about death, but Christians know that death isn’t sleep. (Jesus didn’t sleep on the cross.) Death is death.

It is the presence of Jesus Christ — and only the presence of the risen one – that renders death sleep for his people.  When Paul speaks of “those who have fallen asleep in Christ” he means Christians who have died and who have trusted the resurrection of Christ to be their resurrection too.  But if Christ has not been raised then there is no resurrection for them to trust to be theirs. They died trusting a phantom; they died deluded.

Yet Christ has been raised from the dead. Their trust in him has not been misplaced, has not been in vain.         What it all means is that we can entrust our departed loved ones to the care and keeping of the God who will preserve them and us as surely as he has preserved his own Son.

Christ has been raised from the dead. Preaching is not in vain. Faith is not in vain. We are not still in our sins. And our friends in Christ who have died have truly “fallen asleep in Christ”, for his resurrection is theirs — and ours — as well.

Christ has been raised from the dead.  We are not deluded folk who are briefly living out a giant fantasy. We live in truth.  We shall never have to be pitied, let alone pitied above all others.

                                                Christ has been raised from the dead.

                                                                                         Victor Shepherd  
Easter 2007                                        

1^st Corinthians 15:58

2^nd Corinthians 1:3-7       Lamentations 3:22-24     Mark 4:14 -20         Revelation 14:12

It’s easy to mistake a personal defect for Christian character.  For instance, it’s easy to mistake low self-esteem or self-belittlement for humility. It’s easy to mistake financial self-advertisement for generosity.  It’s easy to mistake calculated lechery for affection.  And it’s easy to mistake rigidity for steadfastness.  The rigid personality is unbending.  It won’t move an inch, often because it can’t move an inch: it’s rigid because brittle, and if it moved at all it would break.  Therefore it won’t budge. Even if someone is wrong, knows he is wrong, and knows he is known to be wrong, he still won’t budge.

When it was proved that the earth revolved around the sun and not the sun around the earth, some authorities shot back, “It can’t be.” When the earth was shown to be much older than commonly thought, many still covered their ears and eyes. And then there’s the story of the dear old gentleman who regarded anything new as belonging to the devil. When he prayed aloud in church he cried, “Lord, you don’t change — and we don’t change.” Rigid.

Steadfastness, however, is different.  We must never confuse steadfastness with a rigidity or a narrowness or an inflexibility born of fear or obstinacy.  Our steadfastness ought always to be formed and informed by God’s. And God is steadfast in that he keeps his promises.  God’s steadfastness is neither more nor less than this: God keeps the promises he makes. God keeps his promises regardless of what non-rigid adaptations he must make in order to keep them. As a matter of fact, so determined is God to keep his promises to us, and so very faithful is God in doing so, that he will do anything consistent with his character to adapt himself to us and our needs.  Inflexible? On the contrary, he will flex himself until he resembles a pretzel.  God’s steadfastness never means he’s frozen, immobile. God’s steadfastness means, rather, that he’s endlessly flexible, adaptable, accommodating in remaining faithful to himself and to us.

We in turn are to be steadfast inasmuch as we remain true to our promises to God; namely that we are going to think and do and live as the child of God he has made us by his grace, as the child of God we in turn are determined to be through our gratitude.  We shall ever render God, at least aspire to render God, our loyalty, our love, our faithfulness, our obedience, our public acknowledgement in worship and witness that we are disciples of Jesus Christ.

There are many situations in life where such steadfastness is sorely needed. What are they?

I: — Affliction is one; suffering, difficulty, distress, pain, confusion, everything that can be gathered up in life’s relentless anguish. Job’s wife watches her husband suffer even as he declares his unswerving confidence in God. Job suffers still more, and only intensifies his trust in God and loyalty to him.  His wife, helpless before her husband’s suffering and angry at God’s seeming indifference, shouts at her husband in exasperation, “Curse God and die.” And what does Job say in reply? “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.” Many people wouldn’t fault Job if his steadfastness evaporated in the heat of his suffering, and Job himself became either a theoretical atheist (someone who declares that God isn’t) or a practical atheist (someone for whom it makes no difference whether God is or isn’t.)         Who would blame Job if he told friends and family that his pain had driven away his confidence in God, his love for God and his obedience to God? Nevertheless Job remains steadfast.

The apostle Paul urges the Christians in Corinth to remain steadfast in the midst of their afflictions, for as they remain steadfast in faith and hope and love, he says, they will know the mysterious comfort of God. Countless Christians from his day to ours have come to know it too.

Every couple of years I re-visit the Huron encampment at Midland . The reconstructed Huron village and the Jesuit mission change very little between visits.  In other words, there’s nothing new to be seen, but I go anyway. I go because I find my own faith fortified and therefore my steadfastness stiffened as I tramp around the precincts of the Jesuit martyrs.  Just how difficult life was for those men we can scarcely imagine. The winters; the black flies; the longhouse lack of privacy; the isolation; the twenty-two day canoe trip to their headquarters in Quebec City; the final bloodletting at the hands of hostile natives.  Yet when I read about Lalemant and Brebeuf and the others I find no bitterness, no resentment, not even resignation; certainly no cursing of God or fate or misfortune. Those men were comforted with the mysterious comfort of God.

Mysterious? Sure.  Just as there is a peace that passes all understanding; i.e., a peace that only God can give in situations where there is no earthly reason for peace, so there is a comfort that passes all understanding, an innermost comfort with which God comforts those who remain steadfast in their love and their loyalty and their confidence concerning him.  If we are asked to explain this, we can’t.  Mystery, by definition, admits of no explanation.  Yet the reality of it is undeniable.

What I have learned from the Jesuits in 17^th Century Midland I have found repeatedly in godly men and women whose lives have touched mine. Their steadfast love for their Lord, even in situations where they hadn’t a clue as to where the difficult developments in their life were going to come out; their steadfast love for him and their confidence in him — all of this was as great as, greater than, the affliction harassing them.

Approaching this topic from a slightly different angle Paul urges the Christians in Corinth to remain steadfast not merely because they will know the mysterious comfort of God, but also because their steadfastness will comfort others. Their steadfastness will be the instrument God uses to bring comfort to other sufferers.

“Just how does this occur?” the sceptic queries.  “How does someone’s steadfastness in the face of her affliction comfort another person in the face of his?”  At the very least the first person’s steadfastness will reassure us profoundly: just as her suffering hasn’t issued in a bitterness that corrodes her heart and embitters anyone near her, so ours need not. Just as her difficulties haven’t eroded her certainty concerning that brighter day when God’s people are going to be released and relieved definitively, so ours need not erode our certainty of that day either.  Among suffering Christians, steadfastness is contagious.  Someone else’s steadfastness amidst her pain and perplexity will lend us at least this much comfort amidst ours.  And where human pain and divine comfort are concerned, to say “at least” is to say “a lot.”

II: — Not only is steadfastness associated with suffering throughout scripture, it’s associated as well with temptation.         We are to remain steadfast when we are tempted.  The book of Revelation speaks of “the steadfastness of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.”

We must remain steadfast in the face of temptation, because steadfastness keeps our heads thinking aright.         Please note what I said: “Steadfastness keeps us thinking properly.” I didn’t say, “Proper thinking keeps us steadfast.”         Most people don’t understand what John Wesley and Jonathan Edwards and countless other giants in the history of the church, as well as all of scripture, have understood; namely, our heart governs our head. We post-Enlightenment types appear not to understand this.

We post-Enlightenment people maintain the opposite; we think our head governs our heart. But the Christian tradition is sound: our heart, what we love (whom we love), controls what we do and how we think in the long run.         In the short run, to be sure, we can always love one thing but will ourselves, steel ourselves, to do something else.         But in the long run invariably our heart, our love, controls what we do and how we think. Steadfastness is simply our persistent love for our Lord whose steadfast love for us never diminishes. Steadfastness is love for him whose love for us can never be discouraged or deflected.  As long as we love him, we shall obey him; and as long as we obey him, our thinking will proceed aright.

If, on the other hand, steadfastness crumbles as love for our Lord collapses, then we do now what previously we declared to be wrong, and do it now announcing to everyone that it’s right.  As soon as our heart leaks away love, our reasoning becomes blatant rationalization. Such rationalization the sober alcoholic calls “stinking thinking.”         “Stinking thinking” is thinking, so-called, that the addicted person regards as the soul of logic and common sense but which everyone else recognizes as the shabbiest, self-serving rationalization.

The heart governs the head. Steadfastness governs thinking. Insofar as we remain steadfast our rationality retains its integrity.  But as soon as steadfastness falters our “thinking” becomes “stinking”; that is, rationality becomes a logically consistent rationalization that we can’t recognize to be rationalization.

The embezzler. He spins a tale 65 pages long justifying what everyone else sees instantly to be self-serving corruption. The abuser of wife or child or workmate: his story is perfectly sound to him, but to him only. The chemically habituated. (We’ve said enough about her already.)  The “paper hanger.” “Paper hangers” are those who write worthless cheques.  Do they have a “reason” for what they’ve done? an explanation? Of course they have. And no one believes it, least of all the judge who sentences them.  The vindictive. The “stinking thinking” that a pastor hears as to why someone at work or at home or in a community organization should be speared, must be speared, had to be speared, is — is what, when even the pastor may find himself tempted to spear disagreeable folk in church life and display the “stinking thinking” that now he can’t recognize.

Just in time we recall the faith of Jesus: when he was reviled, he didn’t revile back. Just in time we recall the commandment of God: “See to it that no root of bitterness spring up and cause trouble, and by it the many become defiled.”

Steadfastness, the persistent love of our heart for our Lord Jesus Christ; this stiffens our resolve to keep the commandments of God; this preserves the integrity of our reason and prevents reasoning from turning into a rationalization that legitimates sin and sinks us ever deeper into it.

The question that has to be on someone’s lips is, “If steadfastness keeps our thinking and our doing from degenerating, then what keeps steadfastness steadfast?  What fortifies it?” There’s one thing for sure: when temptation assaults our steadfastness we shall never fortify it by staring at the temptation, as though by staring at it we could stare it down and make it go away. The longer we stare at temptation, even with the best intentions, the more it fascinates us, the more it doesn’t go away, and the more likely it is to collapse us.

We remain steadfast, in the face of temptation, by the simple yet profound, God-ordained device of distraction.         A friend of mine, a physician, waggishly tells me that when patients come to him complaining of minor, niggling, half-imagined aches and pains, the best medical cure is a swift kick in the knee.  He means, of course, that distraction works wonders.

People in the grip of besetting temptation ask me if they shouldn’t pray about it, pray more about it, and I always answer (to their surprise) “No. The more you pray about it the more you are preoccupied with it.         Let someone else pray about it for you.  You need to go to a baseball game.”

There’s a distraction that’s even better than a baseball game. Paul speaks of “steadfastness in love.” Love is self-forgetful concern for someone else’s good.  Love always directs us away from ourselves to someone else.         Now we are profoundly distracted for the sake of someone who needs us. Steadfastness in love orients us away from ourselves and thereby allows us to remain steadfast in the face of our own temptation.

III: — Lastly, scripture speaks of our steadfastness in our work for God’s kingdom. “Be steadfast, immoveable,” says the apostle, “always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labour is not in vain.”

We read these words at the service of committal as someone’s remains are lowered into the ground.  Well, was that person’s “work of the Lord” in vain finally? After all, he lived only 37 years, or 57, per chance 87.  But against the immensity of human history (never mind eternity) the difference between 37 and 57 or 87 is radically relativized.  And however helpful his “work of the Lord,” how much help could it have been in view of the enormity of human need?

A year or two ago the undertaker in Mississauga asked me to conduct a funeral for a man whose clergyman had refused to bury him. (The 35 year old married man, father of a six year old child, had gone to New York City, had explored sexually what is better left unexplored and had died of AIDS.) There was to be visiting only one hour before the service, my only opportunity to meet the family. I went to the funeral home one hour early.  Already those gathering for the service had rock music roaring through a “boom box” perched on the organ: “Thumpa thumpa thumpa.”  While I was speaking with the widow whose husband I was to bury, a man approached me, introduced himself and told me he was going to speak at the funeral. “That’s odd,” I replied, “I thought I was.”  Next he told me how long he was going to speak: three times as long as I have ever spoken at a funeral.  Defiantly he told me he wasn’t going to abbreviate his address.  I knew right then that this situation was out of my hands.  One hour later the funeral service began.  Halfway through it the widow walked in.  (I hadn’t seen her in the first row or two, but I had assumed she had to be in the chapel somewhere.)  She made a grand entrance, sashaying down to the front row, waving to all and sundry as she paraded herself, grinning from ear to ear as if her ship had just come in.  When she reached the front row she looked at me, and waved and grinned even more ardently. I didn’t know what was going on. I simply did “my thing” and went home.

Tell me: in view of the fact that I had gone to the funeral to hold up the gospel in its truth and reality amidst the power of sin and death in their deadliness, had I gone in vain?  What I went there to do was plainly an unwelcome intrusion in a rock concert. Was it also a “work of the Lord” that couldn’t be in vain?

And then there’s what you people do.  Sunday School teaching. To what end? How much strikes home in the little fidget-bottoms? The never-ending church committee meetings.  To what end? The same question can be asked of any kingdom-work to which we give ourselves.

And while we are at it let’s think of the smallest details of our lives, such as the quiet, unremarkable help we try to render needy people. The harried mother we smiled at in the grocery store as we picked up and rearranged the shelf of breakfast cereal boxes one of the four children she was contending with had strewn on the floor.  The distraught neighbour we spoke with gently just because he seemed so very fragile. Think of any one of these tiny, daily details.  Then think of them accumulated over 75 years and gathered up into one big bag. The one big bag is labelled “My Life.” What does the bag amount to? We know that on the day that the earth and the heavens pass away the bag is going to be consumed. “Be steadfast, immoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labour is not in vain.”

And therefore we won’t quit.  We won’t give up. If we have even a glimmer of fruitfulness about our work, we shall thank God for allowing us to see this much.  And if no fruit is yet visible, we are going to remain steadfast in it anyway.

I am sure that when the Christian missionaries were driven out of China in 1948 they felt that the sacrifices they had made were now dribbling away like water running through sand.  For not only had they been expelled; the deadliest anti-Christian campaign was mobilized and enforced by a communist government.  The campaign was maintained for years, only to be intensified by Chairman Mao during The People’s Revolution.  It was an extermination policy.  But today there are congregations, thriving congregations, throughout China . The seminaries have students. Labour in the work of the Lord wasn’t in vain.

Then you and I must ever be steadfast in such work, even as we are steadfast amidst temptation, and steadfast amidst our suffering as well.

                                                                                           Reverend V. Shepherd                           

March 2009

St. Bride’s Anglican Church, Mississauga

“Be on your guard. Stand firm in the faith. Live like men. Be strong. Let all you do be done in love.”

1 Corinthians 16:13-14 (J.B. Phillips)

“Caesar is lord.” “Jesus is lord.” Both can’t be true. Both Caesar and Christ, the state and Christ, can’t have ultimate claim upon the Christian’s obedience and loyalty and devotion. Only one can finally be sovereign. Because only one could finally be sovereign, early-day Christians were never found saying, KAISAR KURIOS, “Caesar is lord.” Christians refused, on principle, by conviction, to say “Caesar is lord.” For this reason Christians weren’t admitted to the civil service. (Civil servants had to swear ultimate obedience to Caesar.) For the same reason Christians weren’t permitted to serve in the Roman army.

Think about that. No Christian could serve in the Roman army. It’s all the more startling, then, that the apostle Paul compares Christian discipleship to soldiering over and over again. Paul is endlessly fond of military metaphors. “Fight the good fight of the faith.” “Take your share of suffering as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.” “What soldier on active service gets entangled in civilian pursuits?” Since there was every reason for the apostle not to speak of soldiering in a favourable light, the fact that he finds admirable so much about soldiering is breathtaking. We should pay extra-close attention, then, when he compares discipleship to soldiering. Paul knew that a soldier’s lot was rigorous, to say the least: hard training, exposure to elements, relentless discipline, a measure of suffering, more than a little danger. He also knew that a soldier’s lot was rewarding: warm camaraderie, profound bonding, endless adventure, and above all the sheer privilege of serving under a superb leader. Paul knew too that soldiering produced much in soldiers themselves: courage, loyalty, persistence, resilience, dependability.

At the end of his first letter to the congregation in Corinth Paul interjects his little sermon in a nutshell. It’s a ten-second sermon. In ten seconds Paul utters five imperatives, five commands, the first four of which are drawn from military life. Remember, no Christian could serve in Caesar’s army; yet every Christian had to live like a soldier in Caesar’s army.

I: — “Stand firm in the faith.” “Stand firm.” The apostle means, “Don’t vacillate, don’t compromise, don’t capitulate, remain resolute.” We are to stand firm in “the faith”. The faith. Here Paul is not referring to an individual’s act of believing. He is referring instead to what all Christians believe, the substance of faith, the truth of God, the core of the gospel that the church of Jesus Christ has always upheld.

I know what someone is itching to say: the church of Jesus Christ hasn’t always agreed on “the faith”, as the proliferation of denominations attests. Do Baptists and Anglicans agree on the faith? Do Seventh Day Adventists and Pentecostals? In other words, is there such a thing as “the faith”?

Yes, there is. There is the catholic faith of the church catholic. Be sure to spell “catholic” with a lower-case “c”. (Upper-case “C” means Roman Catholic.) When the Apostles’ Creed speaks of the “one, holy, catholic church” it doesn’t mean the denomination with its bureaucracy in Italy. The word “catholic” means “universal”. The catholic faith is the substance of the faith, the truth of God, which all Christians have held at all times, in all places. When placed alongside the catholic faith, what all Christians have held at all times in all places, denominational peculiarities are radically relativized.

Take the matter of baptism, for instance. Some Christians have said that only a little water need be used; others, much water. Some have said that baptism can be administered to children as a sign that God’s promise of mercy surrounded them before they were even born, which mercy is meant to bring them to faith in Jesus Christ, who is mercy incarnate. Others have said that adult believers should undergo baptism as a public confession of loyalty to Jesus Christ in the face of an unbelieving, hostile world. But all Christians, of every era, have been one in acknowledging that the ultimate issue is baptism in the Spirit. Baptism in water points to baptism in the Spirit. Only the Spirit of God can illumine our mind and warm our heart; only the Spirit of God can move us to repentance; only the Spirit can quicken what is now dead; only the Spirit can enliven us for discipleship. Christians may not agree about the quantity of the water and the timing of its application. No matter! Christians do agree about the need for Spirit-baptism at the hand of God himself.

Think about the doctrine of the Incarnation. All Christians are one in confessing Jesus Christ to be the Son of God (or what amounts to the same thing, God-Incarnate). This distinguishes Christians from Unitarians, Muslims, Zoroastrians. All Christians uphold the Incarnation. There are no exceptions. Roman Catholics are as fervent here as Quakers.

Speaking of Roman Catholics and Quakers. These two denominations appear to be at opposite ends of the liturgical spectrum. The Presbyterian Church is more-or-less in the middle. We all know how ornate a Roman Catholic church appears to us. A Quaker meeting-hall, on the other hand, is as barren as an empty cardboard box. A Roman Catholic who entered our sanctuary on Sunday morning would say to us, “Why is the place so plain?” A Quaker, upon entering, would say, “Why is the place so cluttered?” The Quaker would also have questions about our service of worship: “Why is there no protracted silence?” The Roman Catholic would wonder about our service too: “Why is your service almost entirely oriented to what the worshipper hears, only slightly oriented to what the worshipper sees?” At the end of the day, however, the Roman Catholic and the Quaker are one on the catholic substance of the faith: Jesus is the sole, sovereign, saving Son of God.

What about the atonement, the Good Friday achievement of our Lord? Christians may disagree as to whether one should “cross” oneself when entering church or when receiving Holy Communion, but all Christians agree that our Lord’s cross is that divinely-wrought act removing all impediments to our access to the Father. The atonement has brought unholy sinners into the orbit of the all-holy God, with the result that nothing now inhibits us from responding to the gospel-invitation and finding ourselves “at home”, “at one”, with the Father. The Pentecostal in his 4,000 seat auditorium and the Mennonite in her horse-drawn buggy agree without qualification or reservation.

Some Christians think we should forego meat during Lent as an exercise in self-denial. Other Christians think self-denial should assume another form. Yet all Christians agree that Lent ends with the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead – vindication of our Lord himself and of his people too.

Paul urges us to “Stand firm in the faith”, for the catholic faith is the anchor which keeps the ship (the church catholic) from breaking up on jagged rocks when the winds of heresy howl upon it. The catholic faith is the ballast in the ship’s keel without which the first tempest will capsize the ship for sure. The catholic faith is a fort that unfailingly repels all would-be invaders, whether they are frontal raiders or sneaky commandos. “Stand firm in the faith”. The catholic faith of the church catholic is the only place where we can stand. Then stand we must, without vacillating or compromising or capitulating.

II: — “Be on your guard”, the apostle continues. The Greek verb for “be on your guard” means “be watchful”, “give studied attention to”, “take heed”. “Be on your guard.” It doesn’t mean we are to be anxious or suspicious or paranoid. It doesn’t mean we are to go looking for threats or imagine assaults. Nevertheless, it does mean we should be ready, equipped, whenever genuine threat is detected or genuine assault is unleashed. “Be on your guard”. It means “Don’t be caught lounging; don’t be caught drowsing; don’t be caught unprepared.” It’s another military term.

A few years ago a conference was held in the USA where God was re-named “Sophia”. At this conference Delores Williams, Associate Professor of Theology and Culture at Union Theological Seminary (a prestigious institution, and Presbyterian as well), New York City, said, “I don’t think we need a theory of atonement at all.” (Plainly she has no grasp of sin.) “Atonement has to do so much with death…. I don’t think we need folks hanging on crosses and blood dripping and weird stuff.”

Let me say right now: the atonement is the heart of the gospel. Peter cries, “He bore our sins in his body on the tree.” If our Lord hasn’t borne our sins in his body on the tree, then we are condemned before God now, without hope of reprieve. According to Ms Williams, however, the heart of the catholic faith is now no better than “weird stuff”.

Then it was Melanie Morrison’s turn to speak. “What does it mean for us to be in solidarity with lesbian, bisexual, and transsexual women in this decade? And how can we together re-imagine our churches so that every woman may claim her voice, her gifts, her loves, her wholeness?” Is the bisexual or multisexual woman whole, from a Christian perspective? (I’m not denying a psychological perspective, or social or legal; neither am I denying human rights. I am, however, speaking from a gospel-perspective.) Is the transsexual whole, from a Christian perspective? Transsexualism is surgical alteration rooted in gender-confusion, gender-dysphoria and self-rejection; and it is accompanied by a horrific incidence of suicide.

Does any love legitimate any relationship? No. The fact that Mr ‘xy’ loves Ms ‘ab’ in an adulterous relationship never legitimates an illicit relationship.

The United Church of Canada endorsed the Sophia conference and sent 47 delegates to it. The Presbyterian Church, USA, managed to send more than a few delegates as well. Then the second Sophia conference was held. Same story. Once again major denominations sent their delegates to the conference. It is plainly a frontal assault on the faith of the church catholic. Then is it, or an updated version of it, a spiritual threat to this congregation? I like to think this congregation is well equipped theologically to recognize and repudiate all such assaults.

Then need we never be on guard? If we are wise we shall admit that being on our guard, being watchful, is rarely as easy as Sophia suggests just because spiritual threat is rarely this stark; more often spiritual threat is much more subtle and therefore much more likely to undo the saints in any congregation.

The verb “be on your guard, be watchful”, occurs in many different contexts in scripture. Peter maintains that sin is so relentless in its approach and so alluring in its appeal that we must be watchful without letup. Jesus rebukes the drowsy disciples in that during his worst hour of spiritual torment (Gethsemane) they couldn’t so much as “watch” with him for one hour. (In other words, spiritual discipline must not relax.) Paul uses the word in Acts as he warns the congregation that smooth-talking teachers will infiltrate the congregation and seduce it with false doctrine and corrupt practice.

We must never forget that it is our Lord himself who urges his most intimate followers, “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation.” Temptation is subtle. If we can’t be tempted to say outright that theft is good, we are tempted to whisper to ourselves that the little bit of creative bookkeeping needed to get past the cash-flow-squeeze isn’t wrong. (Even though Canada Revenue Agency insists it’s wrong.) If we can’t be tempted to say outright that self-indulgence is good, we are tempted to whisper to ourselves that at our age we’ve paid our dues and need not respond to any claim upon us whether for time or energy or money or prayer. (Even though anyone looking at us would say that our selfishness reeks.) “Be on your guard”, says the apostle, “be watchful.” He doesn’t mean we are to be anxious or paranoid. But he does mean our spiritual antennae are to be tuned in to genuine spiritual threat, whether frontal or subtle.

III: — “Live like men” is his next imperative. Please don’t bristle; he isn’t urging us to live like males rather than like females. He is urging us to live like humans rather than like — rather than like what? rather than like subhumans? But there are no subhumans! Hitler and others have thought there to be, but as long as all men and women are created in the image of God there can be no subhumans. Still, while it isn’t possible to be subhuman, it’s possible to live like a subhuman.

You must have noticed that we never say to an alligator, “For goodness’ sake, be an alligator!” An alligator can only be an alligator. An alligator can never live like a sub-alligator. It is as much an alligator right now as it will ever be. But we do say to someone whose behaviour is less than exemplary, “For goodness’ sake, be a man!” If someone is acting maliciously we often say, “Show some humanness!” But we never say to a mean dog, “Show some dogness!” Dogness is all a dog can show. We know, however, that human beings can show everything but humanness. We have all read of too many human beings who haven’t seemed human. They have appeared savage because evil; or they have appeared stone-like, frozen by fear or laziness; or they have appeared animal-like, governed by instinct. When the apostle says, “Live like men”, he means at the very least, “Live like and look like what you are!”

The only issue to be decided, then, is what we are. We are the noblest item in God’s creation. Then we are to live nobly. At the same time the apostle certainly means more than this. When he says, “Live like men”, undoubtedly he has in mind what it is to be a man in Christ, a woman in Christ. It’s not enough that we live like noble humanists (preferable as this is to living like subhumans). We are to live like what we are: men and women whose Spirit-birth has plunged us into a new world. We are impelled by a new motivation, draw every day on new resources, eagerly move toward a new future, see the world with corrected eyesight. We know that the kingdom of God is the rule of God through the truth of God superimposed on a world that rebels against the rule and contradicts the truth. Christians live precisely where the kingdom of God collides with this present age. We are citizens of the kingdom (this is our identity); but we are mere sojourners in the world (this is where Christ’s soldiers have to campaign for now).

“Live like men.” Minimally Paul means, “Don’t even flirt with the subhuman.” Maximally he means, “Live like what you are: citizens of that kingdom which cannot be shaken.”

IV: — The last of Paul’s military metaphors: “Be strong.” What is it to be strong? It isn’t to be superhuman. Merely to try to be superhuman is to make oneself sick. Then what is it to be strong? Scripture understands strength chiefly in terms of steadfastness. The Roman armies of old weren’t noted for their capacity to crush the enemy at one blow. (The capacity to do this is a function of size; any army can crush another army that is much smaller.) Roman armies of old were noted rather for their steadfastness, their resilience, their persistence, their dependability. To be steadfast is to be immovable, not given to flight or frivolity. To be steadfast is to be resolute, not able to be intimidated or routed.

The peculiar sort of strength that scripture upholds is known as meekness. Meekness is strength exercised through gentleness. In classical Greek the word “meek” was used to describe a wild horse that had been tamed but whose spirit hadn’t been broken. Because the horse had been tamed its strength was useful; because its spirit hadn’t been broken its strength was relentless.

Christians are never called to be strong in the sense of strong-armed, coercive. We are called to be strong in the sense of steadfast, single-minded, unflinching, unswerving. In short, as we uphold the kingdom of God before the world we are to be resistant and resilient, consistent and constant. “Be strong.”

V: — Paul is finished with his four military metaphors; still, he isn’t finished. The last word can’t be from the military; it has to be from what is uniquely Christian. “Let all that you do be done in love.” The apostle knows, at the end of the day, that if anything we do isn’t done in love, then so far from exalting our Lord it contradicts him and his kingdom.

Yes, we must stand firm in the faith. But unless we stand firm in love as well, our contending for the catholic faith will degenerate into contempt for those who appear to undermine it.

Of course we must be on our guard, be watchful. But unless love soaks us we shall soon ridicule those who succumb to the temptations we think we have resisted. (I say “think we have resisted” in that plainly we have succumbed to the worst temptation of all, pride.)

There is no one here who doesn’t wish to “live like men”, to “be strong”. But unless we are also living in love our strength is little more than grim determination to outlast those who disagree with us. “Let all that you do be done in love.”

It’s a sermon in a nutshell. It seems to come out of nowhere in the midst of Paul’s anguished correspondence with the congregation in Corinth. Really, it’s a ray of sunshine, an encouragement to the parishioners in Corinth, a tonic.

The nutshell sermon makes use of four military metaphors (startling, since military service was forbidden Christians in the first two centuries). The fifth exhortation concerning love is not startling, merely costly. For to do all that we do in love is not going to cost us less than it cost our Lord. Nevertheless, the cost isn’t greater than the reward, for our Lord’s sacrifice has issued in a fruitfulness which no one can calculate now, just as no one will be able to deny it on the day of his glorious appearing.

Victor Shepherd               September 2016

2nd Corinthians 1:15-22       Isaiah 55:6-11

It’s startling to find the word “promise” hundreds of times over in the English translations of the Hebrew bible.             It’s startling for one reason: the word “promise” isn’t found in the Hebrew language.  In biblical Hebrew the verb that the English translators render “promise” is simply the verb to speak or the verb to say. In ancient Hebrew if someone merely said he would do something his saying it was a promise.

We are far from this attitude today.  Today we ask someone if he will do something; he says he will; then we come back, “Do you promise?”  Plainly we are asking him to promise he will do what he has said he will just because we can’t trust him; we can’t trust that his simple, unadorned word is trustworthy.  We can’t count on him inasmuch as he has spoken.

Our fellow-Christians who are Quakers noted all of this as early as the 1600s. Everyone knows that Quakers have consistently refused to take an oath in court to tell the truth; they will not swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth — for one reason: Quakers believe that Christians tell the truth at all times and in all situations.  Why, then, would they make a special promise to tell the truth in one situation? For 400 years Quaker Christians have said, “To promise to tell the truth in court is to admit that we do not or may not tell the truth out of court; it’s to admit that our word can’t be trusted day-in and day-out. But our word can be trusted: what we say we perform.  Our simple word is our promise.”

In ancient Israel someone’s word was her promise for one reason: God’s word was his promise. What he said, he did. Promise guaranteed performance.

Since the characteristic of the living God is that he speaks, we can just as readily say that the characteristic of the living God is that he promises; and not only promises, performs.  Everywhere in the Hebrew bible God’s promise guarantees fulfilment. If the promise is made, performance is sure. Nothing describes God more characteristically than the fact that he is the promise-maker and therefore the promise-keeper.

I: — Then we should pay closer attention when we read in the newer testament (Romans 9:4-5) that the promises (of God) belong to Israel . Note the present tense: to Israel belong (there continue to belong, there belong right now) the promises. It isn’t suggested that the promises used to belong to Israel but do no longer.

It’s important to acknowledge this truth for several reasons, not least because of a remark that was made concerning my ministry in Mississauga . The remark was, “Why doesn’t Victor shut up about the Jews?  There is no place in Christian worship for his repeated references to the Jews. If Victor thinks so highly of them, why doesn’t he move over to the synagogue and join them?” I find it odd that no place is to be given to Yiddishkeit in Christian worship when Christian scripture insists that the promises belong to Israel still. According to Christian scripture (what we call the “New” Testament) Israel continues to have a place in God’s economy by God’s ordination.           Could it ever be appropriate to deny this truth in a service of worship?

My repeated insistence on Israel ’s ongoing place in the plan and purpose of God doesn’t mean for a minute that the Jewish people alone of all the peoples on earth have been spared the Fall. It doesn’t mean that they alone have pure hearts while we Gentiles are treacherous. After all it is a Jew, Jeremiah, who insists that the hearts of his own people are “deceitful above all things and desperately corrupt.”(Jer. 17:9)  Jew and Gentile are alike creatures of the Fall.

It doesn’t mean that every last Jewish person is loveable or trustworthy — just as no one is silly enough to pretend that every last Gentile is loveable or trustworthy.

It doesn’t mean that every political move of the modern state of Israel is to be approved. The political moves of the modern state of Israel must be evaluated in accord with the moves of any nation-state.

It doesn’t mean that the history of ancient Israel has been whitewashed. The Hebrew prophets were tormented by a spiritual unfaithfulness in Israel that they described as harlotry; the same prophets were angered by a hypocrisy that they spoke of as a stench in the nostrils of God.

But — and it’s a huge “but” — while God’s next-to-last word to Israel (spoken through Hosea) is “Lo-ammi” (“Not my people”), “Lo-ruchamah” (“Not pitied”), God’s final word to Israel is, “How can I give you up?  And because I cannot give you up, I must call you “Ammi” (“My people”), “Ruchamah” (“Pitied”).

Centuries ago Jesus appeared before Pilate.  Pilate didn’t want to bother with Jesus, since Pilate knew that adjudicating Jewish squabbles was a no-win matter for him.  In a voice dripping with contempt Pilate asked Jesus, “Am I a Jew?” — meaning, “The whole world knows that I’m not one of your miserable people.”

When our daughter Catherine was fourteen (fourteen, not four, and not stupid either) she asked Maureen and me at the dinner table one evening in genuine bewilderment, “Are we Jews?”  Maureen and I quickly told Catherine, “No.  At least not exactly, but in a sense, yes, inasmuch as all Christians are honorary Jews; all Christians are guests in the house of Israel .”

Let us never forget the words of the apostle: “Until you Gentiles had embraced Jesus Christ in faith you were alienated from the commonwealth of Israel .”(Eph. 2:12) Since we have embraced Jesus Christ we now belong to the commonwealth of Israel .

What will happen if we Gentile Christians forget that the promises belong to Israel ? What will happen if we forget that we are guests in the house of Israel ?

We shall neglect Israel ’s book, what we call the older testament (it happens to be 78% of the bible), the first testament; and in neglecting it we shall ruin the Christian faith. Ruin it? Yes, utterly.

(i)           In the first place we shall forfeit the truth that the universe is God’s creation, created out of his oceanic love, ruled by his sovereign mercy, sustained by his incomprehensible patience and finally accountable to him. We shall forfeit this foundational truth inasmuch as the newer testament doesn’t yield a doctrine of creation.

(ii)           In the second place we shall fail to understand ourselves as human beings. It is only in Israel ’s book that we learn we are made uniquely in God’s image, have been made “response-able” to him and “response-ible” for our life with him and with other humans alike made in his image.

(iii)           In the third place we shall no longer know who God is.  We shall forget that
God is not identical with his creation or with any part of it.  (The biggest confusion at alal times is the confusion between God and God’s creation.) To say this is to say that God is holy, and apart from the older testament we can’t understand what God’s holiness means.

Apart from the older testament we can’t understand that God is person. Because God is person, according to Israel’s book, he is heartbroken like a husband whose wife leaves him for another man; he weeps like a wife whose husband won’t come home; he rages at horrors in the world that should find you and me raging too; he grieves over children who would rather be lost than found; he snorts like a labourer or an athlete whose exertion is at its outermost limit; he rejoices like a father whose child is the apple of his eye; he bonds himself to his people like a nursing mother whose breastfeeding brings as much comfort and contentment to her as it brings nourishment to her infant.

When we have ignored — or worse, disdained — our place in the commonwealth of Israel what shall we have left of God? Certainly not God as holy and God as person.  Then what? an abstract idea? a lifeless principle? a projection from our wish-list?

(iv)           In the fourth place unless we keep before us our membership in the commonwealth of Israel we shall invariably magnify the wickedness of anti-Semitism, which wickedness the world may politely denounce out of political correctness but secretly always aids and abets.  Need I say more?

“To them — Israelites — belong (present tense) the promises.” I am unashamed to take my stand with the apostle.

II: — In taking my stand with the apostle Paul I thereby endorse his conviction that “All the promises of God find their Yes in Christ.” (2 Cor. 1:20) Whatever God has promised throughout his centuries-long struggle with Israel ; whatever he has promised to Israel , or through Israel to the church, it is gathered up and fulfilled and crowned in Christ Jesus our Lord. In fact all the promises made to Israel , made through Israel , are promised afresh in Christ and performed in Christ.  “All the promises of God find their Yes in him”, says the apostle.

Because the God who incarnates himself in Jesus of Nazareth is the promise-making (promise-keeping) God, there are scores of promises arising from the earthly ministry of Jesus that we could take to heart this morning and sustain ourselves with until our struggle is over too. There isn’t time to probe scores of them; today we shall probe three only.

(i)             The first promise is that we are never unaccompanied.  “I am with you always, to the close of the age”, says our Lord.(Matt. 28:20) He has promised that he will never forsake us.  Note: he will never forsake us.  This is the promise. The promise isn’t that you and I shall never feel forsaken.  Christ’s people often feel forsaken.  Think of the sentence Paul writes in his second letter to the congregation in Corinth . He speaks of the affliction that savaged him and others in Asia . He doesn’t tell us precisely what the affliction was.  He does tell us, however, what the effect of the affliction was on him and his friends: “We were so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself.”(2 Cor. 1:8-10)  How much worse could anyone feel?  “We were crushed. We despaired of life itself.” Remember, our Lord has promised never to forsake us; he hasn’t promised that he will never allow us to feel forsaken.

It’s only fair that we let Paul finish his own sentence: “We felt we had received the sentence of death, but that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.  Therefore on him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.”

Our Lord has promised that he will never leave us unaccompanied. Has he kept his promise? How can anyone know whether he has kept his promise?  Plainly there can be no proof.  It’s impossible to prove that Jesus never leaves his people unaccompanied. But lack of proof is no detriment. After all, in the profoundest matters of life there never is proof.  I can’t prove to anyone that my wife loves me.  At the same time, I have never doubted that she loves me ardently. In the profoundest matters of life there never is proof; but there is testimony, witness.

Then what testimony has been borne to our Lord’s promise-keeping? We must summon witnesses and allow them to speak.  How many witnesses will it take to convince us?  Myself, I always begin with my grandmother.           She was poorly educated (the eldest of 15 children), became a servant-girl in England at age 12, and then the wife of a factory-worker in early 1900s Canada . (In other words, she had only pennies.) Ten pregnancies, six live births, four surviving children; kidney removed in 1917; towards the end of her life she had to attend relentlessly to a husband whose limbs were as twisted as a pretzel and who was unable to get out of bed for the last 11 years of his life — which husband she managed to outlive for a year or two.  Perhaps you wish to say that her situation may not have been so very unusual for people of her era.  Nonetheless, what was unusual was her quiet testimony concerning the promise kept. “I am with you always; you are never unaccompanied.”  Proof is impossible in the nature of the case.  Her testimony (to me, at least) was so authentic as to be unrejectable. The final stanza of her favourite hymn was fixed in her heart and on her lips:

No tempest can my courage shake,

My love from Thee no pain can take,

No fear my heart appal.

And where I cannot see I’ll trust

For then I know Thou surely must

Be still my all in all.

In the latter part of the 1800s and in the early part of the 1900s Nathanael Burwash was a giant in Canadian Methodism.  Scholar, university professor, churchman, preacher, Burwash was instrumental in moving Victoria College from Cobourg to the University of Toronto with all that Canada’s pre-eminent university could do for Victoria and Victoria for it.  In addition Burwash was a major architect of the uniting churches of 1925. In one terrible week in 1889 he and his wife lost four children to diphtheria. What did Burwash do? Curse God?  Rage that God was merely a teaser and tormentor?  Conclude that there was no more substance or truth to faith than to a child’s imaginary playmate?  Just the opposite. His consistent testimony was that his Lord’s promise was kept.  Christ’s people are never unaccompanied.

(ii)           Never unillumined is the second promise we shall examine this morning.  “I am the light of the world.  Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”(John 8:12) He has promised never to leave us in the dark.

But sometimes we feel we are in the dark.  What’s more, we are annoyed at people who claim never to be confused or perplexed or stymied or ignorant; we are annoyed at people who never seem to recognize life’s complexity.

Then what does our Lord mean when he promises never to leave us unillumined? He means that he will always provide us with enough light to take the next step; only the next step, to be sure, but at least the next step.  He hasn’t promised to give us so much light as to let us see where we shall be and what we shall be about 45 years hence, but certainly enough light for the next step so that the only issue facing you and me is obedience. If we lacked all light we could readily excuse our sin; but as long as we have enough light for one step, the next step, then the issue isn’t light; the issue is obedience. To obey is always to find enough light for the next step again, and then for the next step after that. Not to obey, of course, is to find ourselves in a darkness that only grows darker.

We must be sure to note that the promise isn’t that no one ever walks in darkness; the promise is that whoever follows Jesus; this person won’t walk in darkness, for Christ is light.

(iii)           Never unaccompanied, never unillumined, never neglected.  Says our Lord, “If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him.”(Matt. 7:7-11//Luke 11:9-13) Actually, there is a preface to the promise. “Ask, and you will receive; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.  For nobody asks or seeks or knocks in vain.           Is your heavenly Father a torturer?  Depraved as you are you wouldn’t treat your child like that.  How much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him.”

What are the “good things”?  “Goodies”? Trinkets and toys? Luke’s version of Christ’s promise helps us here: “How much more will your Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.”

The Holy Spirit is God himself in his utmost immediacy, intimacy, intensity. He himself is the gift; he himself in his immediacy, intimacy, intensity.  All who ask, seek, knock find themselves flooded by the Spirit.

Is the promise kept? Proof is impossible. Testimony alone matters, as testimony alone pertains to the profoundest aspects of life.

With whose testimony do we begin?  Paul says, “I am rock-ribbed certain that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”Peter says, “His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.” Julian of Norwich (a 14th century woman), “All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”  Martin Luther, when asked where he would be if everything he had agonized over and laboured for were overturned, replied, “I shall be then where I am now; in the hands of God.”  When a prison guard taunted Nicholas Ridley, the most brilliant of the English Reformers, on the eve of Ridley’s execution, “Do know what’s going to happen to you tomorrow, Mr. Ridley?”, Ridley had replied, “Yes, I know what’s going to happen to me tomorrow; tomorrow I marry. Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.”  The prophet Jeremiah has testified, “God’s faithfulness is great; his steadfast love never ceases; his mercies never come to an end.”

There is no point in piling up testimonies ad infinitum.  Once we have heard them, all that remains for us is to take it all to heart. Which is to say, all that remains for us is to entrust ourselves to him who is Israel ’s greater son. Because he is a son of Israel and speaks Hebrew, he doesn’t have to say “I promise” in order to promise. All he needs do is speak. His word is his promise, his promise kept.

For all the promises of God find their Yes in Christ Jesus our Lord.

                                                                                                    Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                                                                   

  June 2007

2 Corinthians 4:15

Aren’t you amazed at God’s magnanimity, his generosity, his large-heartedness? Clues to his magnanimity (but only clues) are seen in his handiwork. His creation abounds in examples of munificence. Think of the stars. There are billions of them in our galaxy (even as ours is not the only galaxy). Not only are there are innumerable stars, many of these stars are vastly larger and brighter than the star we know best, our own sun. The largest star is 690,000,000 miles in diameter; it is 800 times larger than our sun, and 1,900 times brighter. (Can you imagine a star 800 times larger than the sun?) And how vast is the star-world? Light travels at the speed of 186,000 miles per second. Other galaxies have been located as far away as six billion light years.

The creation is profuse just because the heart of the creator himself overflows ceaselessly. How many kinds of plants are there? And within the plant domain, how many kinds of trees? And within the tree domain, how many kinds of pines? Ninety! There are ninety different kinds of pine tree alone!

And then there is food. When I moved to the Maritimes I was astounded the first time I saw a fishing boat unload its catch. As the gleaming fish spilled out of the hold I felt there couldn’t be another fish left in the North Atlantic. And I was watching one boat only, an inshore-fishery boat at that, unloading only one day’s catch!

As much as we are inundated with fish we have to remember that only 1% of the world’s protein comes from fish. The rest comes chiefly from grain. And right now there is enough grain grown to give every last person 3000 calories per day. (We need only 2300 to survive.) When I was in India I saw tons of food piled at the roadside, in village after village. To be sure, there’s often a problem with food-distribution — since 15,000 people starve to death throughout the world every day — but there’s no lack of food-production. Let us never forget that France is the breadbasket of the European Economic Community, yet the nations of central Africa — where protein-deficiency diseases proliferate — produce more food per capita than France does. Even in its very worst years of famine India has remained a net exporter of food.

Whenever I reflect upon God’s overflowing bountifulness I pause as I think of food; I pause, but I don’t linger. I do linger, however, whenever I think of God’s great-heartedness concerning his Son. The apostle John cries, “It is not by measure that God gives the Spirit!” (John 3:34 RSV) [“God gives the Spirit without limit!” (NIV)] The rabbis in Israel of old used to say that God gave the prophets, gave each prophet, a measure of the Spirit; but only a measure of the Spirit, since no one prophet spoke the entire truth of God. Upon his Son, however, God has poured out the Spirit without limit. The Spirit hasn’t been rationed, a little here, a little there. No rationing, no doling out, no divvying-up; just the Father pouring out everything deep inside him upon the Son, then pointing to the Son while crying to the world, “What more can I say than in him I have said?”

It is not by measure that God has given Christ Jesus the Spirit. To know this is to know that in our Lord there is to be found all the truth of God, the wisdom of God, the passion of God — as well as the patience of God — the will and work and word and way of God. It’s all been poured into him.

If God has poured himself without limit into his Son, then you and I can be blessed without limit only in clinging to the Son. If God has deluged himself upon his Son, then we are going to be soaked in God’s blessings only as we stand so close to our Lord that what has been poured into him without limit spills over onto us as well.

I: — Paul tells the church-folk in Ephesus that the riches of God’s grace are lavished upon us in Christ. Grace is God’s love meeting our sin and therefore taking the form of mercy. (Eph. 1:8) Since God’s mercy meets our sin not once but over and over, undiscouraged and undeflected, God’s mercy takes the form of constancy. God’s constancy remains constant not because God is inflexible or rigid (and therefore brittle); God’s mercy remains constant not because he expects human hearts, now hard, to soften (some will, some won’t); God’s mercy remains constant in the face of our sin just because he has pledged himself to us and he will not break his promise to us even if every last human heart remains cold and stony and sterile. Grace, in a word, is God’s love meeting our sin, expressing itself therefore as mercy, and refusing to abandon us despite our frigid ingratitude and our senseless resistance. To speak of grace at all, in this context, is plainly to speak of the riches of grace. And such riches, says Paul, are lavished upon us, poured out upon us without calculation or qualification or hesitation or condition.

Several years ago in Cook County Jail, Chicago, the prison chaplain visited a prisoner on death row. The convict had only hours to live. Quietly, soberly, gently, sensitively the chaplain acquainted the convict afresh with the truth and simplicity and sufficiency of God’s provision for all humankind, and specifically for this one fellow who would shortly appear before him whom any of us can endure only as we are clothed in the righteousness of Christ. The convict — angry, frustrated, resentful, envious of those not in his predicament, just blindly livid and senselessly helpless — the convict spat in the chaplain’s face. The chaplain waited several minutes until a measure of emotional control seemed evident and said even more quietly, soberly, sensitively, “Would you like to spit in my face again?”

When the apostle speaks of “the riches of God’s grace” he never means that God is a doormat who can only stand by helplessly while the entire world victimizes him endlessly. When he speaks of the riches of God’s grace, rather, he means that the patience of God and the mercy of God and the constancy of God — the sheer willingness of God to suffer abuse and derision and anguish for us — all of this cannot be fathomed. Two hundred years before the incident in Cook County Jail Charles Wesley spoke for all of this when he wrote in his hymn, “I have long withstood his grace, long provoked him to his face”. Because of our protracted provocation, God’s grace can only be rich, can only be lavished upon us. Little wonder that Paul exclaims, “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.” (Rom.5:20) The marvel of God’s grace is that as abhorrent as our sin is to God, it is so very abhorrent to him that he wants it to become abhorrent to us as well; therefore he meets our sin with even more of his grace.

Why does he bother to meet our sin with grace abounding? Because he knows that if only we glimpse how much more he can give us we should want nothing less for ourselves. Jesus insists, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” Our Lord has come that his people might have life aboundingly, hugely, wholly, grandly, plentifully.

We should note that while Jesus urges “abundance” upon us, he doesn’t tell us in what the abundance consists. He simply says that what he lends his people is to be described as bountiful, copious, plenteous, profusive. Why hasn’t he spelled it out more specifically? I think he hasn’t in order to minimize the risk of counterfeit imitation. If our Lord had said, ‘Abundant’ life consists in a,b,c,d, then people would immediately endeavour to fabricate or imitate a,b,c,d — all of which would render abundant life, so-called, utterly artificial.

People crave reality; they won’t settle ultimately for artificiality, regardless of how useful artificiality may appear in the short run. They crave reality. Surely that which is genuinely profound and truly significant will also be attractive. And surely that which is so very attractive will move more people from scepticism to faith and the possession of abundant life than will a clever argument which leaves them unable to reply but more sceptical than ever.

A minute ago I said that when Jesus speaks of “abundant life” he doesn’t say in what the abundance consists. Nevertheless, from the apostolic testimony as a whole we can put together a composite description. If generosity is a mark of discipleship, then one feature of abundant life is ungrudging, anonymous generosity. If love is too, then another feature is uncalculating concern for others regardless of their merit or their capacity to repay. If forgiveness of injuries and insults, then a marvellous forgivingness and an equally marvellous forgetfulness. If seriousness about prayer is a feature of abundant life, then equally significant is a willingness to forego much before foregoing the time we spend with our face upturned to God’s. Nobody wants to reduce holiness, the holiness marking Christians, to sexual purity. At the same time, wherever the New Testament urges holiness upon Christ’s people the context nearly always pertains to sexual conduct. (This is something the church has simply forgotten today.)

Needless to say, in all of this we shall always know that the abundant life streaming from us arises at all only because of the riches of God’s grace proliferating within us.

II: — In view of all that God pours into us, generates within us and calls forth from us we are to “abound in thanksgiving”. (2 Cor. 4:15; Col.2:6-7) We are to spout — geyser-like — uncontrived, unscheduled outbursts of gratitude to God. Of course there’s a place for scheduled acknowledgements of God’s goodness to us as we offer thanksgivings at set times (including Thanksgiving Sunday). More frequently, however, and more characteristically, unplotted effusions of thanksgiving overflow even the channels of good taste and middle class demeanour.

Despite all the sporting events that can be watched on television, there remains no substitute for seeing them “live”. Saturday night broadcasts into one’s living room and the Maple Leafs “live” at the Air Canada Centre are simply not the same event. One thing that never ceases to thrill me at a live game is the crowd’s spontaneous eruption when the home team scores. A Leaf player “drains one” (as they say in the game), and 19,000 people shout with one voice. There are no signs that suddenly flash, “Applaud now.” There is nothing prearranged to cue the crowd. There is only uncontrived exclamation.

Surely you and I will “abound in thanksgiving” only as we are overcome yet again at God’s astounding munificence and we cannot stifle our exclamation. And on Thanksgiving Sunday in particular, is there anyone whose heart doesn’t tingle at blessings too numerous to count? Then of course we are going to abound in thanksgiving.

III: — To know we have been given so much, to be grateful for having been given so much, is to shout “Amen” instantly when Paul urges us to “abound in every good work.” (2 Cor.9:8b) Anyone who has been blessed profoundly, anyone who gives thanks profusely, will always want to abound in “every good work”.

The older I grow the more I realize how important the ordinary, the undramatic, the “ho-hum” (so-called) is everywhere in life. Often the dramatic is deemed especially important, if only because the dramatic is unusual. An automobile strikes a pedestrian crossing the street; the pedestrian’s leg is severed, and the throbbing artery spouts blood, quickly draining away life — when along comes a fellow in his brand-new Harry Rosen Italian wool suit; without hesitating, he rips up the sleeve of his jacket and twists on the tourniquet — just in time. Good. None of it is to be slighted.

At the same time, 99.9% of life isn’t dramatic. For every dramatic assistance we might render there are a million opportunities for the most undramatic, concrete kindnesses whose blessings to their recipients are priceless. Maureen and I in Brandenburg, Germany, for instance, (one hour off the airplane) trying to find the tourist information bureau (needed for a list of “Zimmer mit Fruehstueck” — Bed & Breakfast); we have made four circuits in our rented car of the downtown maze of a mediaeval city, know by now that we aren’t going to find the tourist information bureau if we make 40 circuits, know too that we don’t know how to stop making circuits; a woman who speaks German only saying, “It’s too complicated for me to describe how to get to the bureau from here; I’ll walk you to it” — and then walking the longest distance out of her way to help two strangers from a foreign country whom she will never see again. The young mother across the aisle from me on the train to Montreal; her baby is only six months old, too young to be left alone; the woman is exceedingly nauseated and needs to get to the washroom before; would I hold her baby until she has returned from the washroom? Of course.

Because the undramatic abounds in life (as the dramatic does not), the apostle is careful to say that we are to abound in every good work.

IV: — There is only one matter left for us to probe. What impels us to do all of this? To be sure we are commanded to abound in thanksgiving, commanded again to abound in every good work. We can always grimace grimly and simply get on with it just because we’ve been ordered to; or we can recall the riches of God’s grace that have been lavished upon us. But to have to recall something is to admit that we are lacking an incentive that is immediate; and to grimace grimly and do onerously what we’ve been told to do is to admit that discipleship is a pain in the neck. Then what impels us to abound precisely where we know we should abound? Paul says we “abound” from the heart as joy — joy! — wells up within us.

When Paul saw that the Christians were going to go hungry in Jerusalem during the famine there he asked the Christians in Macedonia for help. The Macedonian believers were poor, dirt-poor. And yet when the apostle asked them to help people they had never seen they “gave beyond their means.” (2 Cor. 8:3) Not only did they give beyond their means, they begged Paul to grant them the privilege of helping others in dire need.

What impelled them to do it? Paul says simply, “…their abundance of joy overflowed in a wealth of liberality.” (2 Cor. 8:2) It was their joy — not their sense of duty, not the obligations of obedience — just their joy in Christ, their joy at the mercies of God, their joy at the super-abounding grace of God in the face of their abounding sin; it was their abundance of joy that impelled them to give beyond their means, poor as they were, as soon as they heard of those who were poorer still.

Only a superfluity of joy renders us those who are willing to make a real sacrifice for the kingdom; and only a superfluity of joy allows us to see that alongside the wounds of Christ we shouldn’t be speaking of our sacrifice at all.

On Thanksgiving Sunday, 2002, I want such abounding joy in my heart as to attest the mercy of God lavished upon me and lavished upon me endlessly in the face of my all-too-abounding sin and undeniable need. For then abounding thankfulness will stream my lips, even as abounding kindnesses flow from my hands.

                                                                            Victor Shepherd   

October 2002

(A word-study in the Greek verb PERISSEUEIN, “to abound”)

Text: Colossians 2:7 — “…abounding in thanksgiving.”

2^nd Corinthians 6:1-10     Luke 18:9-14

For years I’ve been intrigued by the psychology of perception. What do people “hear”? What do they think they hear, that is, as opposed to what was actually said? What do people “see”, claim they see, even swear they see as opposed to what there actually is to be seen?

Laboratory experiments in the psychology of perception fascinate me. One experiment has to do with motion sickness and the perception of motion. A person is blindfolded and seated on a chair, the chair itself mounted on a rim that revolves. As the rim speeds up the blindfolded subject soon becomes dizzy and nauseated. After a few minutes, however, the subject begins to feel better. Soon he feels much better and is glad that the moving rim is slowing down and has even stopped. Now he’s completely relieved of his dizziness and nausea. Actually the rim hasn’t stopped at all. It’s moving as fast as ever. What’s happened is this: after the rim has spun for several minutes the subject’s inner ear has compensated for the motion. The blindfolded subject now feels he’s at rest when in fact he’s never stopped revolving. Little by little his inner ear has made whatever adjustment was necessary to cause a highly abnormal situation to feel perfectly normal.

Everywhere in life there are abnormal situations without number that we’ve learned to compensate for. What at first made us highly uncomfortable is now felt to be normal. Conversely, Christians who uphold what is right and good and true in the midst of the world’s opinion will find themselves feeling most uncomfortable.

Let’s return to the experiment with the blindfolded subject seated on the moving rim. As I said earlier, after several minutes have elapsed the subject feels he’s now at rest and is no longer nauseated. He can’t get off the moving chair, however, until it stops; and it won’t stop unless it first slows down. Therefore the rim is gradually slowed down. As soon as it begins to slow down, however, the subject feels dizzy again, nauseated too; as soon as the rim begins to slow down, the subject complains that it’s speeding up, and that is why he’s newly nauseated! When the rim finally stops, he feels it’s now moving at top speed. Now he’s exceedingly nauseated; nauseated, that is, until his inner ear adjusts once more.

There are many conclusions to be drawn here. For one, feeling is no indicator of actuality. How we feel is no guide to what is. For another, however upsetting the abnormal is, we soon adjust to it and look upon it as the way things ought to be. For another, any return to what’s normal is highly unsettling, at least initially.

Most people look upon the world “out there” as normal, the measure and standard of itself and whatever might come to be. The gospel, however, tells us that the world is capsized.

The world looks upon itself as replete with truth and the measure of truth. The gospel, on the other hand, insists that the world is riddled with falsehood and unable to measure truth.

The world looks upon itself as ultimately real. The gospel, we should note carefully, insists that the world is actual. To say that the world is actual is to say it’s not imaginary and not mythological. The world is actual, to be sure, but it isn’t ultimately real. Ultimate reality is the presence and power of God, the ascendancy of the kingdom, the living efficacy of Jesus Christ. (All these expressions mean the same.)

The world looks upon itself as the source of whatever meaning people discover in the world. The gospel insists that the meaning of the world’s life is given to it by the One who created it and won’t abandon it.

The world unconsciously assumes that whatever most people do is the measure of what humankind ought to do. The gospel insists that what most people do isn’t the measure of anything; God’s truth is the measure of what they ought to do but don’t, and his judgement is the exposure of what they shouldn’t do but do.

So who is right? Think of what it is to be dreaming and what it is to be awake. When we are awake we know indubitably that we’re awake. When we are dreaming we think we’re awake even though we aren’t. It’s only upon awakening that we know our dream of being awake to be an instance of self-deception. When our Lord grants sight to a blind man, the blind fellow knows two things immediately: he knows that he can see (no one could ever persuade him now that he isn’t seeing), and he knows who enabled him to see. When the disciples cry out at Caesarea Philippi that Jesus is the Son of God, they know indubitably that he is this even as Jesus reminds them that they didn’t come to this truth by themselves. When the Christians in Corinth exclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord, they are as certain of this truth as an awakened person is that she’s awake, even as the apostle reminds them that only the Holy Spirit can bring them to this awareness.

So who is right? The kingdom of God and the world with its self-understanding contradict each other at virtually any point at which we care to compare them. A recent magazine article spoke of a “medical emergency” with the headline, “STDS ARE DEVASTATING YOUNG WOMEN’S HEALTH.” The article discussed the nature of STDs and pointed out that 12 million Americans are diagnosed each year with assorted sexually transmitted diseases. The article insisted that the responsibility for the prevalence and spread of STDs together with their attendant misery; the responsibility for all this lies with the federal government. The government hasn’t assigned sufficient funds to such problems, and government under-funding is the reason STDs continue to proliferate. Nowhere in the lengthy article was there even the hint that responsibility might rest with the women themselves. Why not? Because the article everywhere assumes that common access to sexual partners is as normal as common access to the air we all breathe and common access to the water we all drink.

The gospel engenders truth, substance, solidity. The world traffics in appearance, vacuity, froth. Recently a television program informed the Canadian electorate of how rising politicians are coached. Rule #1. Don’t wear a shirt (if you’re a male) whose collar is too large. A too-large shirt-collar makes a man appear terminally ill. (What does shirt-collar size have to do with serving the public good? What does it have to do with wisdom, integrity, trustworthiness?) Rule #2. Don’t say anything. Talk, to be sure, since all politicians have to talk. But don’t say anything, anything you might have to support or defend or account for. Rule #3. Remember that appearance is everything, substance nothing. A few years ago John Turner had the habit of licking his lips frequently as he spoke. A media-consultant publicly ridiculed him. “He looks like an ant-eater at a picnic!”, she sneered. Does the habit of licking one’s lips mean that one is intellectually deficient and ethically defective?

Anyone with a modicum of rationality would expect the world to recognise and honour honesty, decency, kindness, faithfulness, transparency. But the person who exemplifies this doesn’t even get noticed. On the other hand, when Meyer Lansky was the most powerful mobster in the underworld of the U.S.A., he received a personal invitation to the presidential inauguration of Dwight David Eisenhower. Then which is capsized, the world or the kingdom of God? Which is right side up and which abnormal, even perverse? In which do you feel more comfortable?

I am asked frequently about the paradoxes of the gospel. Such paradoxes abound beyond our telling. The arch-paradox of the gospel that underlies all other paradoxes, of course, is the paradox of the cross. We have to say something about this paradox because this paradox gives all others their force and efficacy and truth.

In a world preoccupied with power we can’t help asking ourselves “Where does God display his almightiest might?” God does his mightiest work, of course, at the cross. It was for the sake of the cross that he became incarnate in his Son. Everything in God’s 1200-year struggle with Israel came to its focus at the cross. Everything in the earthly ministry of the Son came to its fulfilment at the cross. The paradox of it all is that God does his unique work — God names himself, as it were — precisely where he’s indistinguishable from two criminals whose names the world has never known and never will. God does his most glorious work precisely where he’s most sunk in shame, for the only people the Romans crucified were enemies of the state, soldiers who had deserted, and rapists. God is most effective where bystanders deem him helpless. God is wise beyond the wisdom of the world exactly where knowing people nod their heads and commiserate concerning his folly. God is most exalted not simply where he’s most humbled but even where he’s utterly humiliated. God fashions acquittal for a world he must condemn precisely by subjecting himself to the selfsame condemnation. God displays his righteousness when the Son who knew no sin became sin for us, and God himself identifies himself with that sin which, say the Hebrew prophets, he cannot bear to behold. In sum, God brings life to the world by bringing death upon himself, a death that is the utmost alienation deep in his own heart, a self-alienation without which our reconciliation with him would never occur. The cross is one grand paradox gathering up a dozen paradoxes akin to those named, one grand paradox that is nothing but paradox.

Since the cross dominates and characterises the Christian story, every aspect of that story is therefore paradox as well. If the core of God’s self-involvement with the world is paradox, then every aspect of that involvement, every truth concerning it, is necessarily paradox too. Compared to the Christian story, the story that the world tells about itself appears back-to-front, inside out, upside down. Or is it the Christian story that’s ridiculous while the world’s is normal? Just who is crazy here, anyway?

In the time that remains today we are going to look at one or two paradoxes. A paradox, we must remember, is a statement that is inherently self-contradictory yet nevertheless true. Needless to say, a statement that is inherently self-contradictory can be true only if the ground of that statement is a reality that can’t be overturned or subverted or dispelled. The ground of every paradoxical statement in the Christian story is the cross. It is that reality which can’t be overturned or subverted or dispelled. Therefore the statements in the Christian story are not only inherently self-contradictory but also profoundly true.

“Whoever exalts himself will be humbled”, says Jesus, “and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” It’s the last line of our Lord’s parable of the two men who go to the temple to pray. (Luke 18:9-15) One man thanks God for all those things about himself for which he should thank God: he doesn’t extort, he isn’t unjust, he doesn’t commit adultery, he fasts and he tithes. Religiously he’s exemplary; morally, he’s faultless. There isn’t so much as a hint of hypocrisy or insincerity or duplicity in him. Every word he says about himself is true. He practises what he preaches. He’s a thoroughly good man. Surely no one wants to say it would be better if he were exploitative, unfair and a philanderer.

The other fellow, so the story goes, simply cries heavenward, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” And it’s this man, insists Jesus, who goes home “justified”, goes home rightly related to God and therefore exalted before God.

On my first pastoral charge I happened to mention, in casual conversation, that the situation before God of every last human being was the same. My situation before God was identical with that of the most notorious profligate any of us had heard of or could imagine. The reaction to my casually spoken line was swift and hostile. “No, it isn’t!”, church folk spat back at me, “Our condition before God is different. Since God is just (at least we all agreed on this point) our moral circumspection has to count for something.” “It does count for something”, I replied, “it counts for our condemnation.” Whereas a minute ago they had thought me ridiculous, now they thought me deranged. I pointed out to them that the fact I wasn’t a philanderer didn’t mean for a minute that I loved my wife. And my moral achievement (considerable, if I may say so myself) didn’t mean that I loved God at all.

In our Lord’s parable the man who exalted himself in view of his genuine virtue used his virtue as a bargaining chip before God, used it as leverage with God. He pointed to it and reminded God that he wasn’t like others. He was telling the truth: he wasn’t like others; he was morally superior to others. However, his moral superiority, a matter of his will, had blinded him to the condition of his heart. His virtue was a barrier behind which he hid from God; it was a disguise in light of which he thought his heart was unknown to God; it was currency with which he attempted to negotiate with God. Unquestionably morally superior, he also thought himself spiritually superior. More to the point, he was so preoccupied with himself and his achievement that he never grasped what the other fellow in the parable knew from the start: ultimately life isn’t a matter of the achievements we “tot up” but a matter of the relationships we cherish; supremely the relationship, our immersion in the heart of God. He never understood that morality boasted of, morality traded on, morality used as a perch from which to disdain those beneath us is a stench in the nostrils of God. And not only a stench in the nostrils of God, a blindness so thoroughgoing as to blind the boaster to the corruption of his heart and therefore to his vulnerability before God.

The other fellow in the parable had nothing of which to boast. Having nothing of which to boast, he wasn’t tempted to boast. Knowing himself surviving at that moment only by God’s patience and going to survive only by God’s pardon, he was without pretence, without pride, without self-deception. Humbled, he could only cry, “God, be merciful to me a sinner.” He went home “justified”, rightly related to God, and thereafter exalted.

The humble, says Jesus, are the exalted; the exalted (self-exalted) are going to find themselves humbled.

Let’s look this time not at a paradox from the lips of Jesus but at one from the pen of Paul. To the Christians in Corinth he speaks of himself and his fellow-apostles as “having nothing yet possessing everything.” (2 Cor. 6:10) We have no difficulty understanding what it is to “have nothing.” To have nothing is to have nothing. But what’s the “everything” that the “have nothing’s” possess simultaneously? The apostle drops clues to this “everything” throughout his letters. “For me to live is Christ” he tells the congregation in Philippi. (Phil. 1:21) “The Son of God loved me“, he exclaims to the spiritually confused in Galatia, “and gave himself for me!” (Gal. 2:20) “Nothing can compare with the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord!”, he exults yet again. (Phil. 3:7) When he contemplates the Christians in Thessalonica, men and women sunk in paganism who had turned from prostrating themselves before idols to serve the living God, he glows, “You dear people in Thessalonica; you are my glory and my joy!” (1 Thess. 2:19) He sums it all up in the pithiest exclamation to the church in Corinth: “Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!” (2 Cor. 9:15)

Having nothing, the apostle yet possesses everything. His intimacy with his Lord is so very intimate, so very intense, that he finds no vocabulary able to do it justice and can only say, “I have been admitted to that which I can’t describe; I have heard what may not be uttered.” (2 Cor. 12:4) Still, he can say something, as his numerous letters attest. Having nothing, he yet possesses everything: an intimacy with his Lord that no one will ever take from him and no misfortune will ever eclipse. It’s an intimacy that is, ultimately, the only wealth he possesses, the only riches he has to share, the only gift he can hold up before his people. This gift (his admittance to innermost intimacy with Jesus Christ) is inexpressible; this gift was fashioned with him in mind; this gift is of surpassing worth (he means incomparable worth). As often as he reflects on this gift he “lights up.” As often as he thinks of people like the Thessalonians who have come to know and cherish the same gift for themselves he is reconfirmed in his vocation, and he recalls that on the day of judgement their intimacy with the Lord will be his glory even as it is his joy now. Because he possesses everything, he can minister out of his riches to others in their spiritual poverty.

I am moved every time I read John Wesley’s journal. At the end of a harrying day when he has ridden miles, exchanged his lame horse for a sound one, contended with smirking magistrates and angry mobs, preached to convicts on their way to execution and coalminers on their way to the pits, written yet another tract for public dissemination and sorted out squabbles among his assistant preachers; at the end of such a day Wesley writes four brief words in his journal, “I offered them Christ.” It was all he wanted to offer. It was all he could. And it was enough, everything in fact.

I began the sermon with an illustration from the psychology of perception. I pointed out that once we become accustomed to what is abnormal; once the abnormal seems normal, a return to what is normal upsets us considerably. At the same time, however much a return to what is normal may upset us at first, we know soon that the kingdom of God is the creation of God right side up, while the world at large is the creation of God upside down. And in the same moment we understand that the gospel is true and sound and sane while it’s the world that’s crazy.

The paradoxes of the Christian story are self-contradictory by definition and therefore nothing more than “gobbledegook” for those who read them through the spectacles of unbelief. But for us whose minds and hearts have been conformed to the peculiar logic of the cross – the grand paradox, the paradox that renders everything about the Christian faith paradox; we glory in that paradox which now makes perfect sense to us, even as we pursue that life where first is last and last first, where saved is lost and lost saved. We count it a privilege to pursue it and therefore will ever pursue it until the day when paradox disappears as the logic of the cross – illogic to the world at present – is seen to be the soul of common sense. For on that day the logic of the cross will be known as truth that never could have been refuted, truth that henceforth can never be refused.

Victor Shepherd    

February 2000

2^nd Corinthians 9:6-15

Deuteronomy 26:1-11     Luke 17:11-19

I: — The writer of Proverbs tells us that there are four things so wonderful as to defy understanding: the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship on the seas, and the way of a man with a maid. These four are wonderful. At the same time, I am sure that the writer would never restrict the wonders of the universe to four. So rich is the creation, so marvellously diverse, that the universe is wonder upon wonder without end.

Vast and rich as the creation is, the Creator himself can only be vaster and richer. Today, on Thanksgiving Sunday, I am led to wonder and gratitude and adoration as I ponder the universe which has come from God’s hand.

Think of the navigational instinct of birds. Myself, I have the poorest sense of direction. Following a road map is almost an insuperable challenge to me when road maps are supposed to render a sense of direction unnecessary. So poor is my sense of direction that I have difficulty recognizing streetscape or landscape that I saw only five hours earlier. Yet the homing pigeon can always get home.

The best navigators are sea birds. Best of all is the shearwater. One of them, taken from its nest and transported 3,200 miles away, returned to its nest 12.5 days later. In other words, the bird had flown, on average, 10.5 miles per hour, 24 hours per day, 12.5 days, and had found its way to the nest from which it had been taken.

Bees aren’t birds, but bees are top-notch navigators as well. In order to orient themselves bees need to see only the tiniest bit of blue sky. You see, light from blue sky is polarized. (Polarized light has different properties in different directions, whereas the light that shines through cloud cover isn’t polarized.) As long as bees have access to polarized light from the smallest patch of blue sky they will never lose their way.

Then there is the brain. The neural complexity, the cellular complexity of the brain astounds me. More marvellous than the structure of the brain is the functioning of the brain. Brain is connected to muscle by means of nerves. Nerves, muscles and brain work together in such a way that we can will to do something and do it!

More marvellous still is the realm of thought. In the creaturely world there is no thought without brain. Yet thought isn’t mere brain-activity; “thought” isn’t just a fancy term for electrical connections among brain cells. While mind, at the creaturely level, never occurs without brain, mind is never reducible to brain. After Albert Einstein had died his brain was sliced ever so finely and examined under a microscope. His brain was found to be no different from anyone else’s. Yet his mind was startlingly different. Why? How? No one knows.

Brain-researchers tell us that one part of the brain has to do with hearing and smelling and seeing, while another part has to do with locomotion, body-movement. It’s easy to confirm this every time someone sustains brain-damage. The area of injury is correlated to loss of sense-perception or loss of movement. Still, the most sophisticated brain-research hasn’t been able to unearth the exact seat of consciousness or how consciousness functions. We know that consciousness is related to the mid-brain, but we don’t know at all how what is organic (brain) is related to what isn’t organic in any respect (consciousness). The everyday commonness of consciousness renders the marvel no less marvellous.

I am rendered near-speechless as well every time I contemplate the heavens. There are 100 billion stars in “our” galaxy alone. A star, as you know, is actually a sun. Stars, unlike planets, are self-luminous. “Our” sun, the sun without whose light and warmth life would never have appeared on earth; “our” sun is 92 million miles away — very close, really, since the next closest sun or star is 270,000 times farther away again (i.e., 270,000 times 92 million miles.) The only reason “our” sun seems so much brighter than other stars is simply that “our” sun is so much closer to us.

You might think that the sun is solid, like hot volcanic rock. Actually, the sun is gas, pure hydrogen gas, held together by gravity. While we usually think of gas as light and airy, the hydrogen gas of the sun is heavy, so dense that there isn’t a person here who could carry a four-litre milk bag of it — since a milk bag of the sun’s hydrogen gas weights 400 pounds.

While the earth revolves around the sun, the sun itself is never standing still. The sun revolves around a point in our galaxy, and revolves once every 220 million years.

We mustn’t think of the sun as the brightest star. Another star in our galaxy, Orion, is 18,000 times brighter than the sun, but it only seems to twinkle inasmuch as it is 545 light years away from us (a light year being approximately six thousand trillion miles.)

So far we haven’t moved outside our galaxy. If we move next door to an adjacent galaxy, we find a tight cluster of stars that is a billion times brighter than “our” sun.

II: — And yet so rich is God that he has made something more marvelous than the firmament: he has made you and me and countless others. For a long time I have known that other people energize me. I don’t have to know these people; I need only be around them, in the midst of them. Just why they energize me I’m not sure. But I think it has something to do with the marvelous diversity in human beings who are, after all, the crown and the glory of God’s creation. In the old creation story in Genesis 1 we read that after God created anything he pronounced it “good.” He created planets — “good”; vegetation — “good”; animal life — “good”. But when he created humankind there were two uniquenesses in the old story: one, God blessed man and woman — blessed them in that they alone were created in his image and appointed to fellowship with him; two, he pronounced what he had done “very good.”

The people, the crowd or the throng that energizes me; they are nameless to me, but they aren’t nameless, and certainly not nameless to God. They are the crown of God’s creation. Every last one of them is a beneficiary of our Lord’s sacrifice. He surrounds them arms and hands whose nail prints they may ignore for now but can never finally deny. Again and again, therefore, people whom I do not know at all are an occasion of thanksgiving for me.

And then there are those who do something extra-special for me: children. On several occasions I’ve travelled overseas to attend international conferences. When I went to Korea in August 1998 for the meetings of The International Congress on Calvin Research I had to get there two days ahead of the conference on account of airline scheduling. I felt lonely. I felt lonely in the same way upon arriving in both Stockholm and in Frankfurt when I was in Europe for meetings of the World Council of Churches. I did in Korea what I had learned to do on my earlier forays: I went looking for children. Finding children isn’t difficult in Seoul, a city of 13 million. The children there were like children everywhere: eager, energetic, oblivious of so much that renders adults cautious or jaded or cynical or hesitant. On an even earlier jaunt to Germany with the World Council of Churches I had felt lonely at the start of my stay. I hadn’t become acquainted with anyone at the conference yet, and in any case it soon appeared that they all knew each other from previous conferences, while I was new and strange. I went for a walk through Arnoldshain, a suburb of Frankfurt, aware that if I could just see some children I should no longer feel lonely or strange. In no time I came upon them. A few rosy-cheeked four year olds were sliding down snow banks. Some were throwing snowballs. Others were waving to their mother as they set off for afternoon classes. Two were locked in a life-and-death dispute. I was far from home, in a country whose citizen I was not, among children who spoke less English than I did German. Nonetheless, they were children. They typified promise, as surely as Isaac had typified promise to Abraham and Sarah, as surely as John the Dipper had typified promise to Zechariah and Elizabeth. They were cherished. Parents had counted the days until they were born and now felt that nothing mattered in all the world as much as their child. Suddenly I was no longer lonely. For me, to be among those who are cherished and the bearer of promise is to understand afresh how much I am cherished and what promise there is about me.

And then there are the men and women I meet in ways that leave me amazed. It happened to me with most poignant profundity when I went to a funeral at Temple Sinai, a synagogue in the Bathurst and Wilson area of Toronto. Because I had arrived 45 minutes early I went to a Jewish restaurant, Marky’s Delicatessen, for a cup of tea. The sign inside said, “Please seat yourself”. I noticed two things. One, there were no seats available. Two, I was the only man without a hat on. All the other men were wearing either a yarmulke or a fedora. It was obvious that I was in an Orthodox Jewish stronghold, and I stood out as the only non-Jewish man on the premises. I waited for a minute, not knowing quite what to do, when at the back of the restaurant an old, thin Jewish man with the warmest smile and the face of an angel moved over on his seat and beckoned to me as he called out, “There is room for us both!”

My heart melted. I had grasped the double meaning he had uttered deliberately when he had said, “There is room for us both.” I sat down beside him and we began to talk. His older sister had brought him to Canada prior to World War II. He and his sister were the sole survivors of his family. I asked him what he had done for a living. “I was a simple peddler. I went door-to-door peddling tablecloths, sheets and pillow cases.” Now he was old. He went to Marky’s Delicatessen every day for lunch. Every morning when he got up, he told me, he did his house cleaning. “I clean my house as well as any man can”, he said with his eyes dancing, “not as well as a woman could, but as well as I can.” I asked him where he had grown up. Southeast Poland. “But I shan’t tell you the village, since it wouldn’t mean anything to you anyway.” He told me next that small and insignificant as his village was, it had had a famous rabbi, a most famous rabbi. “It’s a tradition”, he continued, “that a rabbi remain in the place where he begins his work. Now a minister has to go wherever he is sent. But our rabbi stayed in our little village, even though he could have gone anywhere at all, because the tradition meant more to him than the money; and besides he loved us so much.”

I hadn’t told the old man that I was a minister. Was he psychic? It wasn’t anything psychic at all. It was spirit resonating with spirit. It was heart responding to heart. I told him that in fact I was a minister. “Oh, I knew that already”, he said as if it need not have been mentioned.

In view of the fact that words like “minister” and “Christian” are synonymous with persecution going back for centuries in Poland, do you have any grasp of what grace floods that old man’s heart for him to have said to me, “There is room for us both”? He knew I represented that institution which has afflicted his people for centuries.

As the thin old man finished his lunch and I finished my tea he told me that he had had the most wonderful grandmother in Poland. Every night throughout his childhood his grandmother had asked him the same two questions: “Have you prayed? Have you worked?”

I’ll not see that dear man until the day when Messiah tarries no more. But for my meeting with him I shall thank God for the rest of my life.

If people whom I meet once are an occasion for thanksgiving, what about friends? And beyond friends, what about those people — one or two or perhaps three — who are soul mates and who know us even when we are silent and love us even when we are obnoxious?

Today my heart overflows in gratitude to God for the people whom he has brought before me, people from the big city as well as the tiny village in southeast Poland, not to mention soul mates because of whom I shall never be forsaken.

III: — Neither shall I ever be forsaken by our Lord himself. “Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!” (2 Cor. 9:16), exclaims the apostle Paul. The inexpressible gift is plainly Jesus Christ. He is inexpressible inasmuch as his sacrifice grants us access to the Father himself, and it is his face which mirrors the face of God so as to give us the knowledge of the glory of God. (2. Cor. 4:6)

I do marvel at the vastness and richness of the creation. At the same time, I’m aware that the creation which came forth from God’s hand isn’t exactly the creation which confronts us now, for the creation now exists in the era of the Fall. Certainly I relish all that children give me. At the same time, everyone knows that to be among children, whether as parent or as schoolteacher, is to shed all doubts concerning the doctrine of original sin. Of course I’m enriched by the people whose lives flow through mine like osmosis. But I also have no illusions about the human heart; I haven’t forgotten that the 20th century, just concluded, is the most murderous in the history of humankind. Nature is beautiful; and in a fallen world nature is also blood red.

The gift of Jesus Christ is inexpressible just because it is the one gift, the only gift anywhere in life, which isn’t marred by the Fall. This gift has no downside, no qualification, no reservation, isn’t impaired in any way. In giving us what is dearest to him — his eternal Son — God has given us himself. At what cost we can only glimpse dimly, yet glimpse enough to know that the cost is as inestimable as the gift is inexpressible.

The apostle’s exclamation is effusive — “inexpressible gift!” — just because the apostle’s experience of the gift is so rich. He knew that as the risen Lord stole into his heart the myriad confusions and contradictions in his life disappeared. No longer did he think it was God-honouring to persecute Christians. No longer did he think that only his ethnic group made up the people of God. No longer did he think that favourable standing with God was something he had to achieve, could achieve, or had achieved. He knew himself gathered up in an embrace that freed him to give up his misguided frenzy.

On many occasions in my life different people (as well as the same one or two people many times over) have forgiven me, cherished me, waited for me, refused to reject me or humiliate me when they had ample ground for despising me or dismissing me. What these people have done for me has left me knowing that I am blessed inexpressibly. I also know that what they have done reflects a vastly greater blessing from God himself. When Paul writes with amazement and brevity, “He loved me, and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20), he uses so few words just because he knows that the inexpressible can’t be expressed.

Can’t be expressed, but can be held in one’s heart, can become the truth which quietly transforms us and informs us for the rest of our lives, can become the foundational certainty which sustains us in our living and will see us through our dying. “He loved me, and gave himself for me.”

To know this gift is to know that the gift will be pressed upon me until God completes that good work which he has begun in me. (Philippians 1:6) To know this gift is to know that God will indeed heal that creation of his which, although fallen now, still exhibits splendour and marvel everywhere.

Knowing the One whose depths are unfathomable and whose gift of himself is inexpressible, I am rendered ever more grateful for people whose richness is inestimable, and for a universe whose wonders are endless.

                                                                 Victor Shepherd     

October 2001

2 Cor. 12:2-10    Mark 9:2-9    Col. 1:9-14   Luke 11:24-26

1] We live in an age which craves psychedelic extravaganzas; we crave the most intense experiences. The movie theatre we patronize is the one with quadraphonic sound: the huge speakers, strategically placed, cause us to feel that we are at the foot of the mountain when the volcano erupts.

Then there is the IMAX picture screen at Ontario Place. To see the movie of the stunt flier is to feel you are a stunt flier yourself. (Also to learn that the movie is best not seen on a full stomach!)

We must not overlook the proliferation of sex manuals. Sex is now a high-skill performance ostensibly issuing in a high-intensity experience.

And then I hear the preacher say to young people, “Don’t get high on drugs; get high on Jesus.” I wince. Is not Jesus demeaned (to say the least) by speaking of him as a non-criminal substitute for a chemical hit?

People tell me they have never had a “religious experience”. Do they know what they are looking for? How would they know? How would a religious experience differ from a psychological experience or a human experience? Many such people flit from church to church, sect to sect, guru to guru, pursuing the ever-elusive religious experience.

Nonetheless, I understand what underlies their quest. A divinely-placed longing for the transcendent underlies their quest. We are made for God. Insofar as we do not know God we are aware of an emptiness, even though we cannot identify what is missing. A secularized world in fact cannot identify it as spiritual emptiness, but even a secularized world has an emptiness amounting to a vacuum.

A vacuum, everyone knows, does not remain a vacuum if there is anything ready-to-hand which can fill it, even fill it in the sense of clutter it. Paul insists that God has created humankind with a longing for God. Yet humankind is fallen. In the wake of the fall and the human distortion arising from the fall the longing for God is not recognized for what it is. As a result the vacuum gets cluttered with debris. The bottom line is a hunger for God which is always being fed with substitutes which are less than God.

2] You have asked for a sermon on spiritual experiences. My question to you is this: Do you want spiritual experiences (so-called), or do you want GOD, the holy one of Israel? Do you want a psychological “light-up”, or do you want to be known by and know, be embraced by and embrace the one who is indeed the creator, rescuer and sustainer of the cosmos and of your own existence?

In scripture the commonest metaphor for faith is marriage. I think we can help ourselves in sorting out the question which has given rise to today’s sermon if we ponder the nature of marriage. Do I want to be married or do I want an experience? I want to be married; I want the state of being married, the actuality of marriage. Insofar as I am married, then certain experiences appropriate to the actuality of marriage will follow naturally. But if I start by pursuing an experience which seems to be something like the experience of those who are married; if I start by pursuing an experience, then achieving this or that experience will never render me married, never confer the actuality of marriage. At best I shall be left with an experience which can only be described as an experience of “as if married”. “As if” gives it all away; “as if married” means “not married at all”. Therefore, whatever my experience might be, it could never be an experience of being married.

I must put my question again. Do you want a “spiritual experience” (whatever that might be) or do you want God? The quest for religious experience is not new at all; in fact it is as old as humankind. Think of Mexican peasants eating peyote beans. The peyote beans gave then a drug-induced “high” to which they attached religious significance.

Think of the techniques used to get people into trances. You follow a formula and repeat a sound self-hypnotically until you move into unusual mental space.

Even in the days of our Lord’s earthly ministry there were devotees of Greek mystery religions. One such religion had a practice which you would not find appealing but which the devotees swore by. The devotee stood in a pit covered by a lattice-work grill. A bull was led onto the grill. The bull’s throat was slashed. Blood poured through the grill onto the devotee. She was then pronounced “reborn for eternity”. Was she? Or was this exercise a substitute, a clutter-substitute, for that renewal at God’s hand in virtue of the sacrifice of God’s Son? It should be obvious by now that the quest for “spiritual experience” is fraught with danger. After all, there are contemporary equivalents to the lattice-work and the bull’s blood. The cults are the modern equivalent, not to speak of the occult. In other words, if we are going to speak of “spiritual experience” we should understand that not all the spirits are holy. Scripture says as much as it does about spiritual conflict just because it recognizes that not all the spirits are holy. And even where they are not especially unholy, they may yet be decidedly unhelpful.

Frankly, to seek spiritual experiences is to be looking in the wrong direction. The prophet Isaiah cries, “Seek ye the Lord…”. Nowhere are we urged to pursue experiences. We are to seek that God whom we can seek at all only because he has first sought us and found us in Christ Jesus his Son.

3] Let’s look again at the analogy of marriage. To be married is to live in a relationship. The relationship is the reality of marriage. Within this relationship experiences come and go, a great variety of experiences. There is also the “experience” of not being conscious of anything marital at all. I remain married when I am in my study writing a sermon, even though I am not conscious of being married. There is also the experience of quiet contentment in the presence of my wife. There is also a more intense excitement as we share something extraordinary together. And of course there are moments of ecstasy. But no marriage is sustained by ecstasy. You can’t be ecstatic 24 hours per day. Marriages are sustained by commitment.

There is another dimension to marriage about which far less is said these days than needs to be said. When two lives are fused together the suffering of one becomes the suffering of both. If one suffers and the other refuses to have anything to do with that suffering or to make any accommodation at all, then that marriage is listing and in danger of sinking.

The truth of the matter is that 90% of the time being married is to be unaware of any particular experience at all. When I see my wife at the supper table the “experience” I have (if it can be called that) is simply that I am glad to see her. But this is scarcely extraordinary. 90% of the time to be married is to live in each other’s presence without experiencing anything unusual, whether positive or negative. If you were constantly taking the temperature of your marriage by asking yourself, “What kind of experience am I having at this moment?”, you would soon have no marriage at all; and soon you would not be sane.

This “90% of the time” does not mean that nothing is going on at such moments; the relationship is going on; it’s always going on, and the relationship is everything.

4] So it is with that relationship with God which we call faith. In this relationship everything is going on, regardless of how we feel. Nonetheless I should never deny that we do feel.

In the relationship of faith, where everything is going on at all times , there are in fact moments of heightened awareness, moments of greater intensity, and occasionally, moments of inexpressible ecstasy — as well as moments of piercing pain.

Let’s start where you would never expect me to start: “moments of piercing pain”. On the day of Pentecost Peter, spokesperson for the apostles, is preaching the truth and reality of Jesus Christ, crucified, raised, now ruling. Peter acquaints his hearers with him who is the sinner’s judge, the sinner’s only saviour, and therefore the sinner’s only hope. Luke tells us that as all of this strikes home with the hearers they are “cut to the heart” and cry, “What are we going to do?” “Cut to heart”. They felt as though they had been stabbed in a surprise attack. “What are we going to do?” Sudden, stabbing conviction of sinnership doesn’t come to everyone with this intensity. But whenever it does I should never pretend it isn’t genuine spiritual experience. Any experience which impels people to embrace Jesus Christ is of God.

While we are looking at experiences of unusual intensity we should look at an experience of ecstasy. Paul tells the Christians in Corinth that on one occasion he was “caught up into paradise”, and there he “heard things that cannot be uttered”. The experience was so unusual, and so intensely pleasurable, that he does not have adequate words for it. In my reading of Christian biography I have come upon several similar incidents. I have no reason to doubt their veracity.

At the same time, Paul never urges people to pursue the ecstatic experience he had. He never tells them to try to work it up or put themselves in the mood for it. Worked-up artificiality would guarantee that it wasn’t an experience of God. Instead he immediately tells the congregation in Corinth of another experience of his which he does want them to have for themselves; namely, that in the midst of chronic discomfort and chronic weakness he learned that God’s grace would ever be sufficient for him, just as he learned that God’s strength will ever be made perfect not in our strength, but made perfect precisely in our weakness. This is what he wants them to know and find validated in their lives one hundred times over.

We find the same thing when Peter, James and John are with Jesus on the mount of transfiguration. The three disciples are given a vision of Moses and Elijah (the two greatest figures in Israel); they are also made privy to that Word which insists that Jesus is greater than Moses and Elijah inasmuch as Jesus alone is the Son of God. It is an ecstatic experience and they want to freeze the moment, build a shrine, consecrate the spot then and there, relive the experience over and over. Jesus, however, won’t let them do any of this. Jesus takes the three men down the mountainside to a village where an epileptic boy is convulsing, parents are distraught, church people (disciples) appear helpless and feel bad about it, and some religious leaders are agitating a crowd. Jesus tells the three men that the experience on the mountain was good; of course it was good, since it was God-given and they were meant to have it. Still, among the convulsing and the agitated is where his followers belong.

And then there are experiences which are so quiet and undramatic as to be virtually the constant background to our lives. Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me”. Needless to say Jesus doesn’t mean that we are constantly “hearing things”, as though we were undergoing auditory hallucinations. He means that his people are unremittingly possessed of the conviction that he is the one to be followed. They continue to hear his voice inasmuch as they are never without the conviction that he is the good shepherd and ever will be. It is not a startling experience; it is not an ecstatic experience. But it is the foundation on which the life of any Christian is built. “My sheep keep on hearing my voice; I continue to know them, and they keep on following me.”

Surely most of our Christian experience is of the non-startling, non-ecstatic order. Most of our Christian experience is so very ordinary that it becomes second nature to us; in truth it is our new nature. Paul writes to the Christians in Colosse, “God has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” There is nothing dramatic about this. While a few people can certainly point to a datable, never-to-be-forgotten moment when they were delivered, most cannot. All that matters is this: as we read newspapers and listen to newscasts, as we observe social trends, as we ponder all that tends to confuse people, beguile people, humanly impoverish people, we know in our hearts that we have been delivered from the dominion (the illegitimate rule) of darkness and have been transferred to the kingdom of Jesus Christ; and in him we know ourselves to be forgiven people. This too is experience; elemental experience.

So far today we have seen that some experiences are intense and momentary, some are throbbing and of greater duration, and some are so quiet as to be unnoticeable most of the time. There is another kind of experience which is genuinely of God; what’s more, it is an experience which all Christians are to own without exception. A few minutes ago I said that when two people are fused together in marriage the suffering of one partner must become the suffering of the other. By faith you and I are fused to Jesus Christ; our being fused to him makes cross-bearing inevitable. The analogy with marriage breaks down here, in that although fused to our Lord we are never called to bear his cross (only he can do that); but in his company we are most certainly called to bear our cross. Which is to say, our discipleship requires a sacrifice of us which we readily make for our Lord’s sake.

You asked for a sermon on spiritual experiences. Yet it is not spiritual experiences that we need. It is God himself. To be rightly related to him is to be acquainted with what St.Peter calls the “many-splendoured grace of God”. Just because God’s grace is many-splendoured what steals over us when we neither look for it nor cultivate it will be richer than anything we have anticipated; rich enough indeed to satisfy us until the day when faith gives way to sight and we know even as we are now known.

                                                                             Rev. Dr. Victor A. Shepherd
17th March, 1991

2 Corinthians 12:1-10

Contradictions riddle life everywhere.  At home you are soaked in so much love it’s like being immersed in a warm bath. In the workplace, however, the bathtub becomes a shark tank, and only your wits keep you from being eaten alive, even as you know your wits might not save you from the workplace sharks forever.Again, you are amazed at the affection so many people lavish upon you, and amazed once more that the people who cherish you are often the ones you wouldn’t expect to. You are just as amazed at the hostility of people who don’t like you, and don’t like you for reasons you’ve never been able to figure out.

Life is like this; life abounds in contradictions.

The contradictions of life are all the more startling when we move from the horizontal plane to the vertical, when we move from the contradictions found in our life with our fellows to the contradictions confronting us as the truth and reality of God seizes us. One such contradiction stood out in the life of the apostle Paul.  On the one hand he was exhilarated at being “caught up to the third heaven”, as he put it, “the third heaven” being a Hebrew expression for utmost intimacy with God; unmistakable, unsurpassable, unforgettable. On the other hand he was tormented by his “thorn in the flesh”, an occasion of chronic pain that tortured him relentlessly.         On the one hand, an exposure to God so very vivid and ecstatic as to leave him speechless; on the other hand, an infirmity that continued to bring him anguish comparable to being speared.         What did it all add up to?

I: — Let’s begin by looking at his ecstatic experience.  It wasn’t the only instance of spiritual vividness in his life.  Paul appears to have had uncommonly rich visions, revelations and ecstasies. His encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus had certainly been one of them, foundational, in fact.  Later he had been praying in Jerusalem when he had fallen into a trance and was mystically told to leave the city before he was beaten to death.  Another day he had had a vision of a man from Macedonia crying out, “Come over here and help us.”  Yet again he had had a “visitation” in which he had been told to speak boldly in a particular city in that God was going to bring many people to faith there through his proclamation.

If the Damascus road experience was foundational in the life of the apostle, his experience fourteen years before his first visit to the congregation in Corinth was the climax of all such experiences: “Caught up to the third heaven.” He means “Admitted to intimacy with God, an intimacy whose intensity defies description.” “Caught up to paradise”: he means “Given, amidst the savagery and sorrow and frustration of this earth, a vision of God’s final restoration of the creation, all of it enveloped in an ecstasy no language can capture.”

Unlike religious exhibitionists today who are only too eager to chatter and prattle on TV talk shows, Paul didn’t yammer on and on about this. What, after all, is to be said if an experience is beyond words?  Then why did he speak of it at all?  He attempted to speak the unspeakable in that his detractors goaded him into speaking. His detractors in Corinth snickered that he was a kindergarten Christian, a spiritual midget, someone the shallow Christians there could laugh at one minute and dismiss the next. It grieved the apostle to hear this. When they kept it up, however, and used it as the pretext for dismissing what he had to say to them, he felt he couldn’t turn a deaf ear to it any longer: he would have to refute them if he was going to minister to them. “Listen to this”, he told them; “fourteen years ago I heard what cannot be uttered; I saw what cannot be described.”

We mustn’t trivialise Paul’s experience and pretend that it was merely short-lived psychological fireworks, a Queen Victoria’s Day sparkler that coruscated in his head for a few seconds and then fizzled out cold. I’m convinced, rather, that his experience fired his apostolic work for the rest of his life. Whenever he was ridiculed, slandered, beaten up; when he was afflicted with the worst affliction of all, simply being ignored because not taken seriously; in any and all of this all he had to do was recall the event of his immersion in the innermost depths of God and his zeal for the gospel was renewed again. It wasn’t a thirty-second “rush” as if he had inhaled a lungful of “wacky-baccy”; it was a disclosure of God so intense and so vivid that he never lacked its light and heat for the rest of his life.

If his detractors in the Corinthian congregation had been half as smart as they thought they were they would have known they had a spiritual giant in their midst, someone as huge as Elijah with his experience of earthquake, wind, fire and still, small voice; someone as huge as Elisha with his “double portion” of Elijah’s spirit; someone as huge as Daniel with his prostrating vision of the awesome Son of Man; someone as huge as Ezekiel when, in Ezekiel’s own words, “the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God”.  The Christians in Corinth , however, weren’t even half as smart as they thought they were.  They were the spiritual midgets.

Since Paul’s innermost ecstasy was private and ultimately inexpressible, he referred to it at all and stammered out the most inadequate expression only because his detractors forced him to.         Having mentioned it once to make his point and establish his credibility, however, he wanted to get off the topic lest anyone think him to be posturing himself as other than, greater than, the fragile, frail creature that all of us are. Just in case he was ever tempted to imagine himself lifted above the mundane existence that no one is ever lifted above, “third heaven” experience or not, he told the Corinthians of his thorn in the flesh.  His “thorn” wasn’t a sliver; in classical Greek skolops meant a sharpened stake. The sharpened stake could be anything from a sharpened tent peg to a sharpened fence post to a sharpened instrument of torture and execution on which someone was impaled. It wasn’t a sliver. In other words, there remained in the apostle the twin vividness of his “third heaven” ecstasy and his ceaseless torment.  Regardless of his immersion in the heart of God, he suffered the pain of any human being; and suffered it not once, not even occasionally, but relentlessly.

II: — His inescapable torment: what was it? We don’t know. Some people have guessed epilepsy; some have guessed recurring bouts of malarial fever accompanied by fierce headaches.  In any case we don’t know.  Neither is it important to know.

But it is important to know what his pain-riddled weakness meant to Paul. It meant that regardless of how strong he might appear to some people all the time, or how strong he might appear to all people some of the time, in fact he was weak and would always be weak. Unlike so many others, however, he owned his weakness.  Unashamed of his weakness, he didn’t attempt to deny it or disguise it. Own it?  He did more than own it; he even gloried in it.

It’s important that you and I own our weakness.  Before we even think of glorying in it, we are going to have to own it. Regardless of whether the pain attending it is slight or severe; regardless of whether the impediment surrounding it is little more than a nuisance or nothing less than disabling; regardless of whether it occasions minor embarrassment or major humiliation; in any case it’s important that we own it. For if we don’t own our weakness, then we are denying something that everyone else can see in any case, and we are living in a world of make-believe.         If we don’t own it then we are consciously suppressing or unconsciously repressing something that will fester until the ensuing “infection” distresses us.

But in the church we shouldn’t pretend that psychological categories are the last word; in the church we must admit that theology is the last word, the truth of God.  Then we must say that if don’t own our weakness we are plainly more concerned with looking good than with doing good; more concerned with how we appear than with who we are and how fruitful we can be in the service of God.

What’s more, if we don’t own our weakness we shall always be thrusting people away from us; not deliberately, I admit, yet holding them off none the less. You see, in a world where everyone is weak somewhere, it’s our weakness – owned, joked about even – that endears us to people.         Where we are weak we endear them; where we are strong we intimidate them. To pretend that we are always strong, everywhere strong, nothing but strong is to barricade others from us. Not to own our weakness is forever to be deceiving ourselves and forever to be repelling others.

The saddest thing about not owning our weakness, however, isn’t that we isolate others and falsify ourselves, sad as these are; the saddest thing, rather, is that we prevent the power of Christ from resting upon us. Paul insists that it’s precisely at the point of our weakness that the power of Christ rests upon us. So certain is he of this truth, so consistent is the evidence supporting this truth, that he finds himself going one step farther: he glories in his weakness. He wears his weakness like a badge of honour.

I am moved every time I ponder today’s text.  I am moved whenever I think of the woman I sat with on the Board of Directors of the Peel Mental Health Housing Coalition. The coalition endeavours to procure living accommodation for those who are chronically wounded psychiatrically.  The woman I have in mind has, in the course of a year, several good months, several bad months, and several months whose horror is indescribable. She is schizophrenic herself and moves in and out of the episodes that most schizophrenics know. She suffers terribly. But she isn’t ashamed of her illness. She doesn’t try to hide it. (She’s not so foolish as to think she can.)  She doesn’t pretend she’s non-schizophrenic, doesn’t pretend anything at any time. She does, however, have a credible word to speak to people who suffer as she does; she has a believable word of encouragement, a weighty word of the gospel – a word that you and I can’t speak in the same way to such sufferers in that their weakness isn’t ours and ours isn’t theirs.

We all want to think we’re of greatest use to God at the point of our greatest strength. Just imagine how super-effective God could render my strongpoint, already effective in itself (I like to think.)         Just imagine how fortunate God is that my talent is available for his kingdom. This is what we all want to say, even though our postured modesty prevents us from saying it loudly. The truth is God is nervous about so much as acknowledging my strength.  He knows I’m always one step away from being a show-off; he knows my lurking pride would inflate insufferably if my strength were given the recognition I think it deserves.  For this reason the apostle’s declaration is as sensible as it is startling: our strength is of some use to God, to be sure, but only of moderate use to God; our weakness, on the other hand, is simply indispensable to God – for it’s our weakness which God suffuses with that power which raised his Son when his Son was so weak he couldn’t have been weaker.

On several occasions I’ve been asked to speak at services for physically disabled adults. One evening I noticed a fellow with severe cerebral palsy, twitching in his wheel chair, who seemed inconsolable.  The music that night was brought by a husband and wife who could sing like larks. They could both sing, but only one could walk: the wife.  Her husband was in a wheelchair, paraplegic, the result of a hunting mishap. (His hunting companion had accidentally shot him in the spine.)  The paraplegic hunter sang with his wife, spoke briefly, noticed the distraught c.p. sufferer. A few minutes later he wheeled over to the distraught fellow to speak and embody and bestow a solace that no one else in the room could have.

Dr. James Wilkes, the psychiatrist under whom I studied and from whom I learned more than I can tell you; Jim’s wife worked as a nurse at Princess Margaret Hospital after she had been diagnosed with cancer herself, and continued nursing there until she was too ill to work.  Clearly she had something to share with the patients at Princess Margaret that I don’t have – yet.  I spoke with her at home when she had become too ill even to attend church. She told me that housebound as she was, and growing sicker every day, she spent much time praying for others. “Intercession is the one ministry left me”, she remarked, “but it’s ministry enough.”

Moses stuttered. Because he stuttered no one ever confused that Word of God which he uttered – most noticeably the Sinai pronouncement that has forged and formed the consciousness of the western world – with the words of Moses.

Hosea was heartbroken and humiliated when his wife became a “hooker” and flaunted it. Out of his heartbroken humiliation Hosea became the prophet who spoke unforgettably of God’s heartbreak at the waywardness and infidelity of Israel . “How can I give you up?  How can I give you up?”

All of us have weaknesses both great and little.  Our weakness can be something as obvious as physical disability.  Or our weakness can be something less evident (or something we think to be less evident, since there are never as many secrets about us as we pretend there are.) Our weakness can be something tinged with shame.  Like the aftermath of sexual abuse endured in childhood; like the psychological vulnerability acquired through who knows what assaults in life; like – like what? Our weaknesses are as varied as any other feature of humankind.         Ownership of our weakness would give us access to others who’ve been victimised in the same way; ownership would give us a ministry that others will never have.

Perhaps our weakness concerns a besetting temptation with which we’ve struggled for years. Beset with it, we have had to continue resisting it.  Most likely we’ve thought we were alone in our struggle with this particular matter. To own it and shed our shame concerning it would also end the isolation of another lonely, frightened struggler who has also thought she alone had to contend here and wondered why she had to and for how much longer she’d be able to. Let’s never forget that to find ourselves tempted relentlessly somewhere in life is to be saddled with additional temptation, the temptation to self-rejection. Think of how we could be used of God right here on behalf of someone else.  We have to get beyond thinking that our weakness is the like the sign on the empty, darkened bus, “Out Of Service”.  Remember, the apostle glories in his weakness.

III: — We shouldn’t be surprised that he does.  After all, he tells us elsewhere that he glories in the cross; the cross of Jesus, that is. He knows that the power of God is simply the efficacy of the cross.  Of course he knows this: his apostleship is the result of it.  Furthermore, it’s no accident the apostle tells us he pleaded with God three times for the removal of his affliction.  He has in mind his Lord’s torment in Gethsemane when Jesus pleaded three times to be spared having to drink the cup to the dregs. Yet so unforeseeable is God’s power, so insuperable, so startling is God’s power that not even the cross – and apparent victory of the evil one – not even the evil one’s gloating could frustrate the purposes of God. And just as grace was sufficient for our Lord in Gethsemane, just as God’s strength remains effective in the weakness of the crucified one, so you and I must trust God’s grace to be sufficient for us and trust his strength to be effective in our weaknesses, whether those weaknesses are great or little. Ever since the Damascus road event the apostle had known the resurrection to be the efficacy of the weakness of the cross; and ever since Damascus road event he had known he could glory and must glory in his own weakness, for to be ashamed of his weakness would mean he was ashamed of his Lord; and this he was never going to be.

Unlike Paul I’m not going to say that I’ve been caught up to the third heaven. But I want to say I’ve been caught up to the first.  My exposure to God, my experience of God, my vocation to the ministry; it’s all rich enough to find me resonating with the apostle’s experience and affirming the apostle’s declaration.

“About my thorn in the flesh”, the little man from Tarsus said, “It hurts; it hurts terribly.  But I’m stuck with it. Still, I know it to be the occasion of God’s grace and the venue of his strength. Therefore I regard my weakness as no impediment at all to my usefulness in that kingdom which is like no other kingdom.” So said the little man from Tarsus to the congregation in Corinth .

Did the congregation in Corinth ever hear him?

Victor Shepherd     July 2007